


California Christmas Express

by therudestflower



Series: The Commuter AU [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A Christmas Story, Alternate Universe - Human, Christmas Story, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Healthy mix of fluff and growing pains, I'm so excited for you to read this, M/M, PACK CHRISTMAS STORY but not really, Road Trip, Undiagnosed OCD related to food, You actually don't have to read the rest of the series for this one!, new traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 32,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therudestflower/pseuds/therudestflower
Summary: When Isaac learned that his adoptive sister was dating his new flings' best friend, it wasn't much more than an interesting reveal.When his fling became a serious live-in boyfriend, her trip to meet Scott's mom for Christmas trip-fell into his entire family crossing the country to California for a three-family Christmas celebration filled with an amalgamation of traditions, toes stepped on and food. So much food.But hey, what could go wrong?
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Isaac Lahey/Stiles Stilinski
Series: The Commuter AU [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1121325
Comments: 117
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an exhaustive verse, but you do not need to read anything else, just read this:  
> Younger gen is in mid twenties. Scott moved to Chicago for college, is in law school, met Allison the non-profit she works for, is in a serious relationship. While in this serious relationship, nomadic bff with a ~stable mental illness Stiles crashes on his couch, decides to move to Chicago, meets Isaac on train and starts dating. They learn that Allison and Isaac are adoptive siblings in a wild reveal! As we left off, Stiles and Isaac are getting serious and Allison and Scott are very serious. And Chris Argent loves his children and likes their partners, and is semi-retired. And no werewolves.

It starts with Allison.

The day after Thanksgiving--at 2 AM the day after--she drops it in their group chat with Chris. Isaac's up and going through Stiles's books because his schedule is still fucked. And he's only been living with Stiles a couple weeks and the walls are loud. 

Allison: Hi!

Allison: Nice to see you guys

Chris: You too

Allison: I have enough leftovers to make lunches for a week

Isaac: freeze the meat if you plan on using it more than 3 days

Allison: Ok :)

Allison: I'm going to California with Scott for Christmas to meet his mom.

Allison: How long does gravy last?

Isaac: same thing

Chris: Will you be back in time for Christmas eve?

Allison: Why are you awake Dad? 

Chris: The question.

Allison: ...we're leaving on the 23rd and coming back after New Years.

Chris: One moment.

Which mean's he's doing the _Chris thing_ where turns away and scrunches up his hands then pulls it together. This is not the kind of twists Isaac wants in his life at 2 AM. He jumps onto his chat with Allison.

Isaac: dude

Allison: What? He's taking it fine

Isaac: dude

Allison: He has you.

Isaac: to what, dry his tears while we celebrate the birth of christ without his only daughter?

Allison: Don't make it worse.

Isaac: why didn't you tell him in person? now i'm part of this

Allison: If it was in person it'd ruin Thanksgisving. This way you're here and he remembers he won't be alone.

Isaac: you PLANNED this?

Isaac: he's alone in his empty apartment with all the dishes we left thinking about how much he loves us and all the dishes we'll leave for christmas

Allison: Do you think he's actually upset?

Allison: Spending a holiday with an SO is part of growing up and that's all wants.

Chris jumps back on the group chat. 

Chris: We will regroup in the morning to discuss how this alters our plans. 

Allison texts him directly a second after that. 

Allison: Do NOT tell Stiles about this.

* * *

In the morning Isaac gives Stiles the update over a late breakfast of toaster strudels and he lets his get cold while he squishes the white frosting packet decides if it’s a white food day or not. Stiles is off work and Isaac doesn't have class so they plan to spend the whole day sorting through Isaac's crap so they can use the kitchen table again. Stiles uses the word "synergy" three times while he describes what their unpacking process will be. 

Stiles is the correct amount of scandalized by how Allison broke the news. In fact, too surprised. It takes Isaac a little too long to figure out he’s faking it. 

“You’re both in your mid twenties,” Stiles says, “I know the Argent Lahey family is like, enmeshed, but this was going to happen. It’s healthy. Chris loves healthy things.” Isaac groans and throws the white packet of sugar and fat in the trash. “I knew she told Scott it might be a thing but I didn't think it would be a _thing_ thing. Allison's never spent away a Christmas away from Chris?" 

"Nope," Isaac says. "When she did her senior year of high school in France he flew her home. Same in college, when she was in the Congo." 

"What about you?" Stiles asks. Isaac glances at him, then returns his focus to reading the toaster strudel ingredients. "Besides, you know, the first sixteen years of your life."

"The first year I was still just dating Allison, but I even then I came by on Christmas day. After I moved in, no, I was always there. Chris a fanatic about Christmas. Allison told me she pretended to believe in Santa Claus until she was fourteen because she didn't think Chris could handle the truth. He still makes us stay over the night before Christmas and make cookies for Santa." 

"Made" was the wrong word. Isaac sometimes spent the night before there too so he wouldn't miss anything. "You?" he asks Stiles. 

Stiles shrugs. "I missed it the year I was living in Europe, and my dad was wicked bummed about that, but God bless him he tried his best to hide it. Other than that I always made it home for at least at couple days. He's pumped I'm coming for a week this year. My dad's into Christmas too, he even decorates the station."

“He doesn’t seem the festive type?”

Stiles bounces his head side to side like he’s trying to come up with an explanation. “My mom was more into it. She actually went wild while she was dying, like the disease unearthed this Christmas maniac. My dad tries to keep things up, even if we don’t do the same thing every year.” 

He’d spent time with the Sheriff when he came to visit Stiles at the end of the summer. He was here for five days, and Isaac managed to go the entire time without anyone noticing that he didn’t call him Mr. Stilinski, Noah, Pig or anything like that. 

It didn’t take a psychologist to figure out why he felt like his brain was either on fire or half shut down around him, even when Stiles’ dad was nothing but nice. Stiles’ dad was a cop, and most of Isaac’s interactions with cops involved getting arrested. He was a dad, and even though he had the world’s best dad now, the monkey part of his brain still had issues. And, despite the aforementioned dad being the world’s best dad, back when he was just Allison’s dad, Chris did threaten to shoot him.

He was alone with the Sheriff for seven minutes when they were waiting in line at Walker Brothers. He and Stiles went to a Polish church and Isaac respectfully declined to maintain his two decades and change without entering a house of worship. 

Stiles texted him “almost there, find us in line” so Isaac took the bus over, and walked past the line into the parking lot, but he only found the Sheriff. He smiled apologetically and said, “Stiles is finding parking. He sent me to hold a place in line.” 

“Cool,” Isaac said. “This place is really good.” 

“That’s what Stiles tells me. Have you been here before?” 

“Yeah.” 

It went on like that until Stiles came and saved them. 

"Sheriff," Stiles corrected. "And please do not bring up Sheriff's being a sticks thing again. It was awkward enough the first time he was here. Beacon Hills is bigger than Briarwood so I don't want to hear it."

"That sounds fake."

"Well you're welcome to come to Beacon Hills to find out," Stiles says, then changes the subject before Isaac has to respond. 

Unpacking Isaac's junk takes all day. There's a big difference between a newly settled nomad and someone who's been on their own since for years. Namely, Stiles doesn't have that much stuff and Isaac has a ton of crap. His room at his house was always clean, 90% of his possessions came from the kitchen. And he shelves in the living room where they kept kitchen stuff. 

They spend most of their time trying to fit all his cookware into Stiles's tiny kitchen. His clothes take up more than half of the closet with is mortifying. Like, much more. Stiles insists he's fine with it because "the best time to wear a striped sweater is all the time."

"Would you want to borrow my clothes?" Isaac asks, feeling embarrassed as he does. "You could. If you wanted to."

"Heck yes I want to," Stiles says, "Everything you own looks comfy as shit." 

Stiles blew his Slate money on a big TV. "I'm gonna pack up a lot of my stuff from my dad's house," he says, holding his fingers up like he's framing where it will all go in their living room. "I've got my old X-Box, and my DVD collection--no Netflix for me, no sir if you can't scratch it I don't want it. And my comics. Fuck, I'm so happy to have somewhere to put my comics."

"Sounds good," Isaac says, "How are you going to get all that on the plane though?"

"I'll pack it up and ship it," He reaches up and strokes his fingers across Isaac's face like an Austen character, "Unless you want to come with me and carry them with your big strong arms."

Isaac puts his hand on top of Stiles's head, "I'm not coming to California, flattery will get you nowhere."

* * *

Chris makes them come over to dinner that night. Or, he asks them nicely then Allison blows up Isaac’s phone begging him to not leave her alone to deal with "Sad Dad." Just tIhe night before Chris hosted them, Scott and Stiles for Thanksgiving but there were no dishes in the sink, and Chris already got the stain out of the carpet from the hummus Scott knocked over. 

"I'm not mad, and we are going to talk about what Christmas will look like," he says while they wait for the Korean food to arrive. 

"Are you upset though," Allison asks in a rush. 

"Of course," Chris says. "I haven't had a Christmas without you since you were born. I don't know what it would look like." He heads to the living room and they follow. Isaac takes a spot on his favorite chair and tries to pull out of phone without being noticed.

Allison sits next to Chris. "But you've had other Christmases before. Christmas with Mom was different before I was born," she says, and to Isaac it sounds like a speech she was practicing it in the car, "And Christmas was different every time we moved. And it was different when Kate would come, and after Mom died and after Isaac came. We have traditions but it's flexible."

Chris pauses before responding, like he's waiting to see if Allison has another speech prepared. "Yes. Those were changes. That those happened doesn't mean that this doesn't matter." Allison rubs her eyes. "I want you to go," Chris says firmly, "This is part of growing up. My feelings are not your responsibility. We will make new traditions, just as we have before." 

"Okay," Allison sighs.

"It might be that Isaac and I make new traditions and call you on Christmas Eve and morning. We'll figure it out," Chris says.

Isaac put rice on his place but regretted it immediately. He spends the first half of dinner picking all the rice off his vegetables, then scraping the sauce off them, then removing the bordering infected vegetables. Allison watches him do it, because Allison took three psychology classes in college and thinks there is something significant about random things Isaac does now. She doesn't make a comment this time, thank god. 

"Isaac," Chris says, and for a terrifying second he thinks Chris is going to say something about the rice, "Is Stiles going home for Christmas?"

"Yep. I think he and Scott are flying out together," he says, then adds, "And Allison."

Chris hmms. "Allison and her boyfriend, and your boyfriend will all be together in California. Isaac and I will be here."

Allison saw where it was going right away. "We won't be with Stiles, we'll be with Scott's mom."

"Last night the guys made it sound like the Stilinski's and McCall's celebrate together," Chris says. Allison looks at Isaac, begging him to find a way for to stop where this is going. "So I'm wondering if it would make sense for Isaac and I to come to California and we can all celebrate together." 

Now they're both looking at him. Chris is a normal person most of the time but this is insane. Why does everyone in the world want him to go to California? "I've only been dating Stiles a few months." Which was true, but only technically. "It'd be weird if I up and invited us to Christmas."

Chris nods, "We could get an Air B'n'B, or I could. I'm not proposing this necessarily, I wanted to suggest the option. Has Stiles brought up you coming to California for Christmas?"

"...yeah."

"Then it may be worth considering," Chris says calmly. "If you wanted to go, and you both are comfortable with me coming as well. It would be alright if you both go and I go to France."

"Who's in France?" Allison asks, sounding a little offended.

"The French," Chris says simply. 

Stiles did invite him to California twice today. Kind of. And it did sound like they'd be spending a lot of time with Scott. He liked Scott. While he was mostly annoyed with her for telling Chris over text, it would be his first Christmas without Allison too. And he would much rather meet Stiles's family with Chris and Allison there too.

"I'm not saying yes," he says. Allison whips her head towards him. "Would that be okay with you?" 

"I don't know," she says, "I never considered my entire family crashing me meeting my boyfriends parents to be in the realm of possibility."

"Crashing with permission" Chris corrects. 

"Well that is much more in character," Allison concedes. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Isaac gets home late and just manages to get his shoes off before climbing into bed with Stiles. Stiles wakes up a little and throws his arm over his back.

"How's your dad?" he yawns.

"Insane," Isaac says.

"Aren't they all," Stiles mumbles and falls asleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there!!! Welcome to this story I've been sitting on for just over two years now. I'm PUMPED for it. Most of it is written, so I anticipate the possibility of this entire thing being posted within the 2019-2020 holiday season. But if you're reading this, you've probably been in fandom enough to know that promising a posting schedule is a sucker's game!
> 
> Still, if you're a CAU fan, subscribe and be cautiously optimistic.


	2. Chapter 2

When Isaac lived with Erica and Boyd but still worked overnight, he would go days without seeing Boyd. Erica was usually there when he got home in the morning, and he usually picked her up from work when he woke up in the afternoon. But even if he was awake at normal times, Boyd’s med school schedule and job at the park district (Where he was sometimes Isaac’s boss now) meant they rarely saw each other. 

Moving out was a combination of Boyd and Erica getting engaged, and getting more serious with Stiles. He wasn’t sure if he would have moved if only one factor was at play, but as it was, he’d moved out and quit his job, and he saw Boyd more often. 

They meet at the gym at 7 AM three days a week and pick up Starbucks after. Both Erica and Stiles independently describe it as their "Man Time."

"You gotta do more cardio," Isaac says while he spots Boyd bench pressing about forty thousand pounds. "Your muscles are going to crush your lungs." Boyd grunts through his set then drops the bar on the rack. He huffs for a minute and Isaac adds, "You wouldn't wheeze like that if you got a treadmill just once."

"Is that your expert opinion?" Boyd says.

"Don't be embarrassed to take my advice. I wouldn't say my community college it's the same thing as Pritzker Medical School, but only because that would be embarrassing for you" Isaac says. Boyd catches his breath then lies down to do another set.

Isaac and Erica always ganged up on Boyd because it was easy and Boyd was a good sport. Erica got her associates in business a year before Boyd graduated Northwestern and she spent the entire year signing her texts as "Erica Reyes Lopez AA." Their latest long joke was that Isaac's 12 weeks of CNA classes were the same thing as Boyd's degree in physics and three years of medical school. Isaac liked to send Boyd snaps of what he was studying, like CPR charts with the caption "for your notes."

Quitting Jeanne’s was impulsive, but going to nursing school was even more impulsive. He had random college credits from when Chris wanted him to go after her dropped out and got his GED, and the community college advisor he saw after the Sheriff visited told him he could be working in the field by the summer. 

Everyone was confused about it. Everyone. 

“I can’t just be a baker,” he said, “I haven’t even gone to school for it. Jeanne’s is a joke, no one would count it as actual baking if I tried to work somewhere else.”

Chris wanted to know if Isaac knew that he would be just fine with him not going back to college if that wasn’t what he wanted. 

Stiles wanted to know that he was fully supportive, and if his jobs at the park district didn’t cover things like he would totally--

Allison wanted to know if he’d looked into whether he could get nursing jobs with his arrest record. 

Erica wanted to know if he’d be able to prescribe himself a medical card. 

Boyd wanted him to stop by and observe because he thought it was a really great idea and also what if they could work at the same hospital? 

Isaac wanted every single person to shut up. 

He put his hands out to spot Boyd, even though if he was unable to lift 400 billion pounds on his own they were both screwed. When they first moved to the house Boyd was unhappy and sedentary. At some point he switch his way of dealing with his problems from playing video games all night to working out like he was preparing for the Zombie apocalypse.

After a few slower reps Boyd caught his breath, then sat up. "Your turn."

While Boyd destacks his rack Isaac says, casual as possible, "You're going to the Reyes's for Christmas, right?" Of course he was. In the years Isaac had known Boyd, he didn't think Boyd had seen his parents more than twice, and the Reyes family lived in a house two blocks from theirs. So Boyd stayed quiet, waiting for Isaac to say more.

"Is it weird?"

“The Reyes are weird. Two of the aunts called me ‘Isaac’ for the first two years and said they couldn’t tell us apart”

Isaac felt a little smug about that. “But is being there weird.”

Boyd looks surprised and starts taking the weights off. "The first time I did Christmas with Erica's family it was. They did everything differently than my parents did, and I spent the whole time thinking about how I wasn't with my parents."

Isaac already went through that with Chris. The first Christmas he got stuck on the fact that Chris used a fake tree and he didn't use colored lights. The apartment smelled like cinnamon, not warm dirt and citrus. By the second year it all felt so much better than Christmas with his dad. He was fine. He was already over not being with his parents, so he might not be that way with Stiles. Especially if Chris and Allison were there. Was he actually considering this?

"Do you still feel that way?" Isaac asked.

"I still think about it sometimes, not so much anymore. It helps that everyone knows who I am now. I'm still not sure if they like me, but now I not surprised when they pull out fireworks.”

Isaac stacks something less than a billion pounds on the bench press. "The Reyes are pretty intense."

"Why are you asking about this?

"I’m just being nice so you don't let one of those med school assholes be your best man." He stands for a minute looking at the bench press that was waiting for him. "I'm not going to do this."

Boyd's left shoulder rises then falls, one of the only small movements that reveal that Boyd has feelings below a critical threshold. "Why'd you stack it then?"

"I don’t know. Reassure you I’m physical weaker so you’re not intimidated by my superior medical knowledge?"

* * *

There were a lot of things that Isaac learned about Stiles once me moved in. Like Stiles still calls his dad every day. At the beginning, he told Isaac, his dad made him because he was worried that Stiles was going to have a breakdown but now he'd been in Chicago for 9 months and had a lease, so it was less of a concern.

It's a good sign, Isaac decides. It wouldn't mean anything if Stiles's dad was making him call. It doesn't mean anything if you make someone do something. But Stiles likes his dad enough to call him anyway, so he can't be a total sociopath. Stiles talked loud when he was on the phone. He laughed loud and pulled funny clips up on the TV and played it on speaker for his dad's benefit.

Sometimes he put the phone on speaker and said "Isaac's here, say hi" and Stiles's dad would say hi. He sounded like Chris sounded at night, when he was tired and didn't speak like there was a battle plan behind every word.

Stiles's dad would say, "How is school going?" because he sounded like Chris but wasn't Chris so he didn't know that was the least friendly question someone could ask Isaac.

He would say "Fine.”

School was boring, it was repetitive and a lot of memorization which took him like two seconds to do outside of class. In class, he was the only guy in a room full of eighteen year old girls and forty year old women, neither of whom could tell he was gay and all of whom hit on him constantly. Stiles suggested he show up in some of his old club clothes to get them to back off. He didn’t think that would actually help. 

Today Stiles's dad asked him what his family was doing for Christmas. For a second he thought that Chris or Allison told someone and word got back to him. But is his dad was anything like Stiles he would have said so, so Isaac said, "We don't know, yet" and tried to figure out what else to say until Stiles took the phone back because he found the Hulk video he wanted to show his dad on the TV.

After a phone call Stiles crashed on the couch and hooked his legs over Isaac's "My dad thinks you're a magic person. He gives you full credit for me staying here--I don't think he's even going to try to get met to stay in Beacon Hills when I go home."

"It's not just because of me," Isaac says and he mutes the TV.

"It's a lot because of you, Cowboy."

Stiles wears these patterned socks that he orders online. Today's socks have reindeer on them and Isaac lifts his foot looking for the Rudolph. "Chris likes you too, you know. I know he comes on strong at first, but he thinks you're--how did he put it? 'Harmless.'"

"Oh good, we can get married. Since your dad has more money than mine I assume you'll be providing the dowry?"

"Not now that I know you're just after me for my money." Isaac finds Rudolph above Stiles's ankle and pokes the red nose. "What does your dad know about me?"

"All the good things" Stiles says.

"Oh yeah, that I'm an high school dropout drug user with a record?"

"Yes," Stiles agrees, "and I told him that your favorite Star Wars movie is Attack of the Clones."

"You like that movie too," he objects. Stiles was the one who insisted he stay over and finish it last time they caught it on TV."

"It's not my  _ favorite _ " Stiles yells, "I don't make my boyfriend watch it two times in two months. I don't know facts about the onset hijinks."

"It's only my favorite because it's the first one I saw in theaters."

"Yeah me too but I don't base my life around it" Stiles says. 

Isaac starts figuring out a way to get a real answer to his question, but Stiles saves him the trouble.

"Since I'm a callous monster, my dad mostly knows thing about you related to me, like stuff we do together. But he knows how we met, and that you're into true crime podcasts. He knows you're in school, he asks me how it's going. He knows you like soft shirts. I did tell him about that time you got a ticket for parking your car backwards, which he liked because he cut his teeth as a meter maid. Uh, I told him about the bagel thing on the train. Oh, and he definitely knows that you don't get my whole nomad thing and he wholeheartedly approves."

"You told me that when we were on the train."

"See? He's been member number eight of the Isaac fan club for the better part of a year."

"You think only eight people like me?" Isaac says, even though he knows exactly who the eight people are that Stiles is referring to.

"Uh no, I think you only let eight people into the club."

Isaac plays with the cuff of Stiles's jeans. "Does he know about Chris?" Stiles nods. "Who does he think he is?"

Stiles hesitates and Isaac's brain flashes through every single thing he told him about Chris and the Laheys that he possibly could have told his dad--a  _ cop _ . Stiles notices. "Hey--I didn't tell him anything you told me not to tell anyone." Stiles uses his arms to push himself up so he is sitting closer to him. "He knows Chris is your dad. I just told him your parents died when you were a teenager, and Chris took you in. That's all."

"That's alll?"

"You didn't tell Chris my stuff, right?" Stiles asks.

"No," Isaac said. Stiles didn't think he would do that, did he?

"Yeah, cause we're both decent people. Did he say something when I was in the bathroom that got you worried he doesn't like you?"

"No, he's Mister Rogers every time I talk to him. I was just wondering."

"Wonder no more. I think he thought Chris was still in France because before I told him about the Allison Christmas Scandal he was on me to invite you to Beacon Hills for Christmas."

Jesus Christ.

The weird thing was, Isaac wants to go. Stiles told stories about comic book stores and drinking in the forest with Scott and he wanted to be there at least once. It was nice to think that there was a guy in California who he didn't even know that well, who liked him just because he was with Stiles and it might be okay if he tried harder to talk to the Sheriff. Christmas would probably be fine with just him and Chris but it would be even better with everyone else.

“Um, so last night my dad thought it might be okay if we all went? Like, me too, but him too…..too. I wouldn’t go if he didn’t so if that’s not okay the--”

“Do you want to come to Beacon Hills for Christmas?” 

“Well, Dad said we should ask, but if it’s not--” 

“Do  _ you  _ want to?”

“Yes.” 

Stiles kisses Isaac on the cheek the jumps on the couch and starts bouncing around. "I love this. Love it love it love it love it. We're gonna be like the Kennedy Compound. My dad wants to meet your dad--Scott's mom wants to meet you. I get to prove to you that Beacon Hills isn't the sticks. By the way what the fuck is up with that, I know for a fact you were born in a barn. Oh man, I am almost one hundred percent sure you've never had peppermint milk."

"Your dad might not want--"

"My dad in my garage looking for air mattresses as we speak through psychic joy  _ alone. _ "

It takes serious effort to calm Stiles down and convince him not to call his dad. "Allison's probably not really okay with it. And Chris wants to come too and thats--"

"Sh sh," Stiles said waving his phone, and Isaac plucked it out of his hands. "Hey give that back to me! I have to call Lifetime to negotiate the rights to the Christmas movie based on our lives!" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I was bluffing about posting regularly didn't you?


	3. Chapter 3

In the weeks after everyone got on board with Christmas in California, it felt like every conversation lead back to planning for the trip. 

There was more to figure out than any of them expected. Stiles became the go between to communicate with California about how long they would be there, where Chris would stay, what size slippers Isaac would need for Christmas morning. The morning after Isaac said yes and the trip was confirmed, he opened his eyes to Stiles sitting cross legged on the bed with his laptop in front of him. 

Isaac groans. “What? Why are you awake?” If Stiles is awake earlier than him, things are weird. 

“Don’t worry,” Stiles says. 

“Cool, I’ll just like, call Scott and--” 

“Oh stop, it’s not like that.” 

“Then what?” 

Stiles puts his laptop on the ground and lies down. He doesn’t snuggle in when Isaac lifts his arm to invite him. “Yes. One sec. I need to cancel my flight today.” 

Fuck. “Why? Are we not going?” 

“No no no,” Stiles rushes, “totally. Yes. There’s seats on my flight if you wanna come but like…”

“‘...but like’ I’m severely claustrophobic and have never been on a plane? Yeah, I’m not gonna fly. Don’t worry, Chris said he’ll drive out with me.” 

Stiles actually pouts. “But. Dude. I want to go on a road trip with you.” 

Stiles is his boyfriend. They live together. They have sex. The fight about deleting Survivor episodes off the DVR He is the person who pays the most attention to Isaac, and switched to rice milk for him. 

He still gets floored by moments like this. 

“You want to drive with me?” 

“Of fucking course? If you felt like you wanted to fly like, yay huge personal growth, but I ten thousand percent want to drive there together. It’ll be fucking fun.”

It would be fucking fun. 

He feels guilty when he tells Chris. They haven’t driven outside the midwest together, and in the four texts they exchanged the night before Chris referenced a military museum in Nebraska and Fort Fred Steele, which meant he’d started planning before Isaac even agreed to go. 

There was no reason for Isaac to see Chris three days in a week, so he texted him. 

Isaac: hey, so stiles figured out that i wouldn’t fly and he wants to drive out with me  
Chris: That’s wonderful. It will be a great experience for you to share.   
Isaac: ok   
Isaac: does it bug you that we won’t do it?  
Chris: We have plenty of time to go on a road trip if you want to, but it’s normal at your age to do this with a partner, not a parent.   
Isaac: so it doesn’t bother you  
Chris: Isaac, you should go on this trip with Stiles. He will be much more fun than me.   
Isaac: are you still going to come?  
Chris: Yes. I will fly on the same flight as your sister and Scott.   
Isaac: but in first class  
Chris: Yes. 

Since Chris decided that he liked Scott and Stiles he started finding reasons to have the four of them over to dinner, as often as possible and planning the trip became the perfect excuse. Earlier in the year Chris asked him and Allison to find out what Scott and Stiles favorite foods were (spicy popcorn and mozzerella sticks, disgusting) and used the dinners to test them out. He even sets up Skype on his laptop so they could video chat with Stiles's dad and Scott’s mom and establish what everyone looked like.

With all the Christmas frenzy Stiles and Isaac decided not to get a tree. To compensate bought all the Christmas lights in Dollar Tree. They wove strings of white and colored lights over the walls in their apartment. Their biggest accomplishment was the grid they hung over the living room ceiling that lit the place up. When it was hung up the lay on the floor and moved between fooling around and staring at the lights.

"We should leave these up year round," Isaac decided, "We can throw out all the other lights."

"We should get a ladder and hang these up outside our building and become the tacky Christmas people."

"Yes, you should do that."

They have so many lights that the can't have them on all at the same time. They learned that when they blew a fuse and got a fine. Stiles devoted a good afternoon to configuring it so that they could turn on either all the colored lights or all the white lights at once.

Stiles takes charge of planning the road trip to California. 

Because Isaac is in the middle of finals and is working at the ice rink and Stiles is between projects and not working at the ice rink because Boyd fired him after six hours. 

Stiles hated Slate practically before he started there. Through what seemed like seven connections, he got a gig doing some kind of data work for a Psychology graduate department in Finland. Why Finnish people needed Stiles Isaac wasn’t sure, but he had tons of money and facts about seasonal affective depression. They aparently didn’t need him during December but they still paid him. It was insane. 

Isaac makes half the rent between managing the lessons schedule at the ice rink, scheduling classes at the rec center, and the stray business he got making not disgusting birthday cakes. But Stiles picks up most dinners out. It’s weird. 

He makes a mild protest that Stiles doesn’t have to plan. Isaac argues that it isn't that time consuming because the trip to Beacon Hills took 30 hours so all they had to do was go west and crash at a motel when they got too tired to drive. It would take less than two days.

When he tells Stiles this, Stiles pats him on the face and says, "I believe that you believe that, and that is why I'm in charge of the road trip."

\---

Chris told him once that Europeans don't understand how large America is because in Europe you can drive to another country to pick up dinner and be home before it got cold. For example, Chris said, a person might take a train from Paris to Frankfurt to buy a specific kind of cake flour. Who that theoretical person was Chris left as a mystery.

Four hours into their drive to California, Isaac understands why Europeans thought America sucks. They packed up and left their apartment before it was light out, stopping at the 24 hour Jewel to load up on Mountain Dew and hostess doughnuts.

After serious conversation they decided--Stiles decided--that his car was more likely not go die in the middle of the desert. Stiles used his Slate money to buy an eight year old Jetta which had 230,000 miles fewer than Isaac's pile of rust.

Before they leave Isaac drives his car to Boyd and Erica's house and parks it in it's true home, the backyard. "I get it," Stiles says somberly, "Someone sees this beauty parked behind our building they're not going to be able to resist stealing it."

Their energy is high at the beginning and they blast twentyonepilots then ABBA because they get gayer every week. Just when they start to get bored they pass through Tomah County and there's some excitement while they try to spot the field where the fair was, which is impossible since the entire Midwest is covered in two feet of snow. After that though there is nothing out their window but snow and it doesn't look like there will be anything but that until Iowa City.

"We have no non-carnal needs stops until Colorado," Stiles updates him when they cross the Mississippi River. "The theme of this leg of our journey is, 'If you're going through hell keep going.'"

“The Midwest is hell?” 

“Not the Chicago part.” 

“Chicago is 234 square miles, the reigon most commonly accepted as the Midwest is 750,582 square miles. Chicago is negligible.” 

Stiles looks over, “Jesus Christ you’re phone isn’t out, you just now that. Full on freak.”

Stiles is driving--he insisted that he's going to drive until he's about to pass out, which seems stupid but Isaac will wait for him to learn that on his own. He has gloves and a scarf on and is drumming his hands on the wheel.

"You sure you don't want to go visit Grinnell?” Isaac asks, “Give me the college tour? This is where I had my first kiss, this is where I had my first sip of beer--"

"Ha! No thank you please. Boulder will be enough of a nostalgia stop for me. And there’s very little to see at Grinnell College, unless you want the Stiles Stilinski Breakdown Tour."

"I'm waiting to experience the real thing."

"Well you might fucking see it today if Nebraska is this boring."

Nebraska is worse. At one point they go so long without seeing any sign of humanity that they have to pull up GPS to verify that they haven't driven off the face of the earth. Luckily Stiles anticipated this and planned in car activities to cope with "the America that God forgot."

There's the playlists of their favorite songs and Stiles's dad's favorite hair metal songs. From Lincoln to Doniphan they listen to some Bad Religion album Stiles calls "freshman year the album." He screams along and thrashes around all while keeping the car on a perfectly straight trajectory. Every few minutes he glances over and sees Isaac grinning at him. Stiles stick out his tongue and thrashes harder.

In return for that display Stiles agrees to listen to ten minutes of each of Isaac's favorite podcasts. Stiles never likes his history shit, so he chooses ones he might like. Stiles vetoes 99% Invisible, gets through one episode of Heavyweight, and three minutes of Strangles. They get through three episodes into Welcome to Night Vale and four minutes into the fourth when Stiles asks him to turn it off.

"Too creepy right now." He had a point. On either side of the car were white snow covered fields and the entire sky was white cloud cover. It felt like they were driving through the inside of a snow cone. There were no reference points to make it feel like they were moving at all.

"Let's play the license plate game instead," Isaac says.

"Okay, that will be fun if we ever see another car."

One of the bright spots is that there are Casey's General Stores everywhere. Isaac didn’t think they existed outside of Indiana until they pass one in Iowa and a Google search confirms they’re all over the Midwest. Their only stop in Nebraska is at one to load up on gas and various peanut butter based snacks. Isaac hadn't been to a Casey's in years and couldn't help dragging Stiles around it pointing out snack brands he never saw in Chicago. There’s bulk candy dispensers and Stiles loads up on sour candy. 

"So these are pork rinds," Stiles says, shaking a bag. "I didn't expect them to come in bag form." Stiles opens up a bag right their in the aisle and pops on in his mouth. He offers the bag to Isaac even as he makes a face and spits the pork rind into his other hand. He offers that to Isaac too.

Checking that the storekeeper isn't looking, Isaac grabs the bag and sticks it back on the shelf, "You're disrespecting Casey," he whispers.

"Sorry Casey," Stiles whispers and wipes his hand on a disposable napkin.

Because he has to, Isaac buys a full pizza and won't let Stiles start the car until he tries a piece. No pizza he's had has ever lived up to Casey's pizza, especially not the tomato cheese monstrosities you can't get away from in Chicago. He battles his brain that tells him if he eats this he'll get sick. The cheese isn’t white, it’s yellow, and the crust isn’t white, it’s brown. He has three pieces. 

"I don't want to eat gas station cuisine," Stiles says, batting away the piece Isaac holds out.

He lays it on thick, "There was a Casey's a mile from my house growing up and we used to get pizza after meets. Are you refusing to participate in one of the few good memories I have of my horrendously traumatic childhood?"

They've had enough conversations about his childhood that he can say it without it becoming A Thing so Stiles takes a piece with a loud groan. He takes a bite and immediately scrunches up his face and spits it into a napkin. "That wasn't a symbol of me rejecting your happy memories. It was a symbol of gas station pizza being gas station pizza." Isaac rolls his eyes and takes the slice out of his hand. Stiles wipes his mouth. "Do you want to talk about it more?"

He puts the pizza in the backseat after taking another slice. Stiles is an idiot. It doesn't taste exactly the same, but it's still good at least. "No, I want to talk about how you never swallow."

Stiles guffaws and starts his car.


	4. Chapter 4

The second they cross the Colorado Stiles takes his hands off the wheel and starts clapping. "Yes, we're out of that red state hell hole." It's too late to see much of anything except the reach of their headlights, but Stiles starts rattling of where they are in reference to mountains and bars.

"Spoiler alert to later in our trip," he says, "I _know_ you're just thinking about how to get your hands on some of that sweet kush you love so much. Nebraska makes way less possession arrests on our routes than Utah, and since you are not going to be hitting that at my dad's house I have planned a stop a dispensary on our way back."

Jesus. What the fuck? He’s supposed to get through this trip with just the stash he brought with him? "I love that you know me," he says. 

There's no pizza or snacks left when they get to Boulder. They've been driving for 17 hours and never switched because Stiles gets a resurgence of energy in Colorado. Once they're within city limits Stiles starts narrating his favorite places—“There's the park with the teacups! There's the pizza place that has honey dippers!” Isaac has no idea if they're going to visit any of them because all Stiles told him was that they were going to stop in Boulder and Salt Lake City. And he only did so under duress. The rest is a secret. They get to their hotel at just after ten and Isaac is so hungry he's tempted to steal all the mints at the check in desk.

The hotel is a two-story stone building west of downtown. There's a clear view of the mountains from their rooms' little patio and they spend a few minutes standing there looking before Stiles says "I can't really see anything" and Isaac says "Me neither" and they go in their room.

Stiles jumps on one of the beds and the bedsprings screech. The beds have worn dark wood headboards and there's a photo painting of a field of llamas hanging over them. "This place isn't nearly as creepy as I hoped it would be," Stiles laments, looking around the room. "Which bed do you want to do it on first?"

Isaac drops his bag on the other bed, which somehow creaks even louder. "We need food."

Stiles planned to order food in which is a stupid idea when they're hangry as shit. The first major deviation to Stiles's schedule is saying a hearty fuck that and driving to Stiles's favorite bar because if Isaac doesn't want to wait for delivery in a haunted hotel room. Everyone in the bar is dressed like they're just got off a mountain, with fleece and flannel everywhere.

"How out are we going to be?" Isaac asks while wait for the bartender to notice them. Stiles looks around at the bar patrons, almost all twenty-something white people with--again--flannel everywhere. "Very?" Isaac guesses.

"The very most out we've ever been," Stiles confirms. "Are you cool with being the designated driver?" Which is a rhetorical question more than anything, because Isaac never drinks and Stiles does things like ordering two beers at the same time. "This is peanut butter pale ale, this is raspberry something so you gotta double fist them. Holy shit I missed drinking PBJ. We're going to have to hit up a King Soopers and buy more Colorado shit."

There's signs that Stiles has been here regularly, that he knows what he's doing. He doesn't say hi to any of the staff, but he makes a beeline for a favored booth after they get their orders in. Once Isaac is settled he leaves and comes back with a small bowl of popcorn.

When they talked about the trip Isaac didn't give as much thought to coming to Boulder. Even though he knew Stiles lived here for a year the only time he ever talked about it was to make fun of the hipsters. Whenever they got onto the random places Stiles lived, the only ones he talked favorably about were Amsterdam and Austin. Whether it was having a therapist he liked, or getting to know each other better, over time Stiles got less defensive about his lifestyle before Chicago. He started referring to the time he spent moving around the world as his "crazy days" and admitted that his move from Boulder to Chicago was "More of housing situation than a mental illness situation like the others."

It's nice to see Stiles in his element somewhere, to have some piece of what his life was life before they met. On Stiles's recommendation, they order smothered burritos. Stiles models how to eat them with a fork and knife. "Delgado's is better but _someone_ didn't want to wait for delivery."

The burritos taste nothing like a burrito Isaac's ever had before, it's more like a soup than expected. They're too tired to look at each other too much, so they compare texts from Chris and Stiles's dad.

"Overprotective parent round one" Isaac starts, "you first."

Stiles stretches his arms up and to the side like he's preparing for a race. He reads from his phone "'Sheriff Noah Stiniski 6:03 PM Mountain time: Looks like snow in Lincoln. Are you past there yet? Do you have a blanket in your trunk?'"

"That's a five," Isaac says.

"No judging until they're both on the table," Stiles insists, "Your turn."

"Chris Argent 8:05 AM Mountain time: 'If you haven't left yet I will come by with my cooler. Don't want food poisoning on the road."

"Noah Stilinski 7:14 PM Mountain time: Heard parts of I-80 is a dead zone. Text me when you have cell service.'"

"'Chris Argent 4:27 PM Mountain time: Do you have enough gas?'"

"Can I ask a follow-up question? What was in the plan if you said no?"

"Drive a can of gas to Nebraska for us," Isaac guesses.

"But he'd leave it in a mystery spot and sends us clues to find it so we'd learn something" Stiles adds, "That seems like the Chris Agent way. I'd say it's a draw. They are equally overprotective."

"At least they'll have that in common,"

Stiles finishes his burrito in half the time he does, and orders another plus a plate of smothered fries with Chicharrones. "That's fried pork fat," he says, "I'm making amends for the pork rinds at Casey's, RIP."

They take the fries to go because Isaac is not going to eat fried fat and Stiles falls asleep at the table for five minutes or "Like a second and a half." The hotel is creepier than when they first got there, and wind off the mountains rattles the screen door. If Stiles was totally sober Isaac would creep him out by making up a story about the axe man haunting their hotel. The rattling window is the soundtrack while they inaugurate the bed closer to the door as the sex bed, then with great effort shower and brush their teeth like civilized people. Once that's done Stiles paces the room in his boxers, texting someone with his brows furrowed.

"You're going to get athletes foot," Isaac informs him. He's in a bad mood since he saw that he passed all his classes and was automatically registered for the nursing classes that were pending his grades. He's not sure why, it's a good thing. 

Stiles doesn't appear to hear him. "I have to ask you something,” he says, gearing up to something "and when I ask you this, I want you to remember that I spend a lot of time with your ex-girlfriend and even lived with her at one point. No jealousy because we are solid as could be. And she’s your sister. Your family--okay. With that in mind, how would you feel about getting breakfast with Caitlin and her girlfriend?"

"Caitlin your girlfriend?" Isaac asks. He knows Stiles lived with her for longer than they've lived together, and that she had a cat but that was it. Neither of them talked about their past relationships much. Isaac’s not sure he’s even said Danny’s name. He had no interest in having a meet up with some girl Stiles dated, but he knows the decent thing was to go along with it.

Stiles comes around to the other side of the bed and puts his still buzzing phone down. "My _ex-girlfriend_ who dumped me and moved the girl she was cheating on me with into our house _while I was living there_. I like her so much less than you."

Isaac reaches over and pulls Stiles into bed, "Yeah, as long as you don't change your mind and take her home to Christmas instead of me." Stiles shimmies so he's lying with his head on Isaac's chest. "I've got my heart set on finding out what peppermint milk is."

"No, that's all you Cowboy," Stiles insists, "we're going to make a gallon just for your personal Christmas spirit."

Isaac turns off the light. The glass door behind Stiles rattles in waves and the people in the voices of the people in the room next to them carry through the walls like they do in Stiles's apartment in Chicago. Yesterday Isaac was taking his last final and all he could think about was the difference between isotopes and atomic numbers. Now he was in Colorado, sharing a bed with the guy he was crossing the county with for Christmas.

"Thanks driving with me," he whispers when they're both about to fall asleep.

Stiles yawns, "It's good we're driving. I don't know how to flirt with you unless we're moving at 60 miles an hour."

* * *

  
  


Isaac met one of Allison's boyfriends when she was in college. He came up to Michigan with Chris to help move Allison out of her dorm. His name was Roger. He was the president of his fraternity.

Roger showed up while they were loading up the SUV--by coincidence!--with an excuse for why he had to leave in 300 seconds that Allison clearly had made up and provided for him. He stood straight spined with a water bottle with fraternity letters gripped in one of his hands, and with the other, he dove to shake Chris's hand.

Meeting him on a curb in Ann Arbor, Isaac only felt prickling annoyance at having to deal with this person who he found five things wrong with on sight. He thought it might be different if Allison a boyfriend back home, and he had to see them going to the beach or really doing anything that they used to do together. As it was, he felt no need to assert his place is Allison's life, or intimidate him in any way.

It was just over a year after the adoption, and they were still figuring out what to call each other. They dated longer than they’d been siblings, even though Allison pointed out they stopped having sex or even pretending to date well before the breakup. 

It was rare that someone new knew that they were both exes and adoptive siblings, Scott and Stiles were the first to know in years. Allison hadn’t even told Scott, when she asked Isaac why he referred to her as his ex when she was much more his sister he said, “I just didn’t want him to think I was too gay” and Allison went from annoyed to adoring in seconds, because that, as she pointed out, was a terrible way to get a boyfriend. 

But back then, at the end of Allison’s freshman year, it wasn’t odd that she introduced him as "my dad’s other kid slash my boyfriend from high school.” The trill of panic in Rogers's eyes handled any desire Isaac had to assert dominance, make it clear that he knew Allison best. He was not threatened.

Isaac did not feel that way about Caitlin.

For one thing, she is half an hour late to breakfast. Breakfast is the last thing someone should be late for. People waiting to eat breakfast haven't eaten anything yet, especially when people eating breakfast are traveling and only have rancid fat fries in their hotel room. 

They're in a vegan restaurant with sticky tabletops and a grotesque metal sculpture suspended over their table. Anticipating the snide remarks Isaac was queueing up about hipster granola morally vapid lifestyles Stiles points out that _Isaac_ is six months away from being vegan and he's just mad about it. 

"In the short short time I've know you, you've lectured me six times on the amount of water used to make a pound of packaged beef," Stiles says, garnering a hearty nod from the server brings them to their booth. They slide into opposite sides of the bench.

"One thousand eight hundred gallons," Isaac can't help but say, "It's not the killing the animal, is the wasted energy that I have a problem with." The server drops their menus a little harder than necessary on their table and walks away without asking for drink orders. "See?" he says, "I'm not one of these people."

"Well, that's just cause I haven't given you your baja hoodie yet." 

Isaac sat facing the door so he could see Caitlin coming first. He found her Instagram before Stiles woke up and scrolled all the way back to photos of the two of them hiking and playing one of the nerd board games Stiles was always bugging him to play. Based on the photos, Stiles and Caitlin were together for eleven months. 

"Nine months isn't a short time," he says, staring hard at the menu. Stiles hums and puts his menu down to show he's paying attention. "You said the short time you've known me, but we've known each other for nine months," he says.

"Oh I know, I'm just being dramatic. Babies that were conceived the day we met are now screaming pooping little monsters." 

"That's the way I like to think of our relationship." 

While they wait, Isaac taps his phone on the edge of the table. Stiles is making a game of guessing which item on the menu is most likely to secretly not be vegan. When Isaac doesn't participate he reaches over and puts his hand over his wrist.

"You're still my favorite," he says. 

"I better be," Isaac mumbles.

"This is the part where you say I'm your favorite too," Stiles wheedles.

"Yeah, obviously you are also my favorite."

When _she_ comes with her girlfriend in tow she slides into the booth next to Stiles in the booth smiles like they were all old friends catching up. Isaac is immediately pissed that he didn't see this coming and didn't sit next to Stiles instead of across from him. She grips the shoulder of Stiles's jacket and pulls herself close to him. Stiles just stares at her. The girlfriend, Emily, slides in next to Isaac. Based on the set of her brow she doesn't care for that shit either.

Caitlin notices. She laughs and tucks her hair behind her ear. "Force of habit," she says. Her voice is deep, and she and Emily are both wearing flannel and fleece jackets that seem to be a mandatory part of the living in this town. 

Emily clears her throat and turns to him, "I'm Emily." 

"Yeah, sorry!" Stiles says, snapping out of the trance he went into when Caitlin sat down. "Caitlin Slovick, Emily Carr, this is Isaac Lahey."

"Boyfriend," Isaac clarifies.

"Yes, boyfriend. Super great, smart, hardworking, loyal, capable of being quite chill boyfriend.” 

That’s such passive-aggressive bullshit. Agreeing to do this was chill, he didn’t have to fall in love with Caitlin too. 

Stiles never explained why he wanted to get breakfast with Caitlin. He railed on the drive over about how he in no way still had feelings and they would be on the road to Utah in an hour. He didn't explain why they were even meeting up with this girl who screwed Stiles over and still texted him like they were old friends. 

"Isaac," Caitlin says. She pronounces his name with an "ack" and the end instead of "ick" and he didn't realize he hated it when people did that until now. She leans forward and said in a low conspiratorial voice, "Thank you for confirming my long-held suspicion that Stiles would be way happier with a guy." 

"I did it for you," Isaac says dryly. 

Caitlin smiles and leans back. The server comes and takes the orders Stiles and Isaac spent half an hour picking out, and the women chose without looking at a menu. Caitlin picks the conversation. "Isn't it cool that a year ago this time me and Stiles were here, looking the picture of hetero romance and now here the four of us are."

"It's the millennial nation," Emily agrees, "We get queerer every year." 

"Aaaand it could be all of us were already queer and maybe not a cultural thing?" Stiles says, trying to diffuse the conflict he saw coming. 

"Yeah, for sure," Caitlin says. They move on to talking about an internet computer game the three of them play--the one that Stiles and Caitlin met on when they were in high school. Caitlin and Emily were in favor of the design of goblins in an extension pack while Stiles thought they were a disaster.

For a while, Isaac could enjoy not being in the loop and focus his mental energy on figuring out how to convince Stiles that he is no shape to drive the first leg to Utah. He fell asleep on the car ride to breakfast. It was a very nice fifteen minutes until their food arrived and reset the conversation. 

"So Isaac," Caitlin says, "What do you do?"

"This and that," Isaac says. From his early morning research, he knows that Caitlin is a chemical engineer and probably makes more than everyone he knows combined. 

Emily laughs, "That's a total drug dealer answer." When every single person at the table glares, her eyes widen and she drops the fry in her hand, "What?"

Stiles reaches across the table and tugs on the cuff of Isaac’s shirt once then pulls back. "Isaac helps manage an ice skating rink in addition to killing it in nursing school. He has like, seventeen jobs."

“I have three jobs.” It’s not a sign of anything except an encroaching gig economy and being eligible for his father’s health insurance for a few years, but he wants Caitlin’s bad impression of him to be correct. 

“Three,” Stiles says.

Caitlin nods and points to Emily, "Emily worked at an ice skating rink, in high school right? I wish I had a job that came with free churros."

"That's what I'm in it for," Isaac says. There's no missing the implication of that fun tidbit. She may as well have said, "I'm so much better educated and successful than you that your livelihood is like child's play to me." 

So he says, "It's nice that I could meet you on our way to Stiles's hometown. Did he ever invite you home to meet his family while you were together?"

Stiles jumps in, "Cait, are you doing the Chrismahannukwanzikah party at your house or Jolene's this year?"

"You guys must be really serious," Caitlin says coolly, ignoring the bait. 

"We live together," Stiles says, finally sounding annoyed. 

"Sure," Caitlin says, "Stiles is the best roommate ever. I seriously miss having someone manic washing my dishes at three in the morning. Do you remember that?" Caitlin says laughing, and Stiles smiles tightly. "We had a whole song about it. Did he show you?" 

"Nope," Isaac says. "But I do my own dishes, so." 

Caitlin shoves some food from her plate onto Emily's and takes from Emily's plate without asking. "So. Isaac. Sorry for all the questions, it's just that Stiles hasn't told me a single thing about you."

Isaac looks at Stiles, "Thanks for that," he says sincerely. Then he turns his focus back to Caitlin. 

"That checks out. All he's told me about you is that you cheated on him and let Emily here move in the same day he found out about it. I haven't done anything _that_ noteworthy." 

For a minute they all look at each other, waiting for someone to do something. Stiles covers his mouth then bursts out laughing. "Oh my god, you are such an asshole." Caitlin looks murderous. 

Stiles starts to say something, then a slow smile spreads over his face. “Yeah, he is. He really is. I’d rather have a kind asshole than a deceitful bitch.” 

Emily flags down the sever like she's on a sinking ship. "We need the checks. Now." 

Caitlin stands up and leaves, which is pretty fucking immature. Emily stands up and starts to walk after her, then doubles back and drops a twenty on the table. The second the door closes behind her, they burst out laughing. 

"I'm really sorry," Isaac says, "I swear I didn't know I was going to act that way." 

“That was gold,” Stiles says, “Oh god. Oh got that was like, the fights I have in my mirror but in real life.” 

They can't get their untouched food to go because styrofoam on cardboard boxes are wasteful, but the server offers to sell them glass containers for $10 apiece, which Isaac is willing to do since he's the one who ruined breakfast but Stiles refuses. "This is what's wrong with Boulder, by the way," he says. 

They stop at a McDonalds drive thru 3 miles outside of Boulder. There's not a lot of not white, vegetarian food on the menu so Isaac impulsively orders a large chocolate milkshake and Stiles cheers and orders one too. 

Stiles lets Isaac drive and explains it because yesterday's drive killed his love of the open road. "And, what with our exciting morning I figure that your impulse control is back in order."

"I guess it’s good you’re not working at Slate anymore. You got that through her dad, right?” 

"Yes," Stiles confirms, "But good riddance. I knew it would be awkward. The Lahey versus Slovick brawl is what I didn't see coming. Is it okay if I liked it?" Isaac let out a hysterical laugh and Stiles rushes to defend himself. "No, I didn't like that you were upset cause I never like that. I liked that you were mad at her, madder than I could be." 

Stiles reaches out and brushes his hand against Isaac's shoulder like he's making sure he's still there. "I thought it would responsible. You know? Civilized. The grown-up thing to do. I don't know, I was thinking we'd talk about video games and maybe feel better about how we left things."

"You wanted an ending."

"I wanted to tie up loose ends," Stiles corrects. 

"It that was this trip is about?" Isaac asks. "Cause I wanna know." Stiles has spent his entire adult life running across the world every time things got out of control. He knew Beacon Hills was the first place he ran from. 

"No," Stiles says firmly. "This is about Christmas."

At the Wyoming border, they pass the sign "You are leaving Colorado!" going too fast to read it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was gonna be two chapters but I love the confrontation too much to wait


	5. Chapter 5

Isaac knew how to drive by the time he was twelve. 

He doesn’t remember when he first sat in a driver's seat, but he vaguely remembers sitting on his dad’s lap and turning the wheel, then at some point in the future driving around the high school parking lot after swim practice. 

He was thirteen the first time he got pulled over, and the cop only said, “Just tell Coach not to let you do this in Marks County.” 

It didn’t occur to him that he was a bad driver until he got a car and learned that city driving was an entirely different animal. But he got used to it in time. He knew how to drive in prairies and in cities. 

He did fucking not know how to drive in the mountains. But he’s pretty sure his life would be a thousand times better if he lived somewhere with them. 

Way too quickly outside of Salt Lake City, 1-80--which had been hilly at best--cut into mountains. It’s twisty and steep and fucking terrifying. 

It’s _awesome._

“Fucking hell!” Stiles yells when he takes a steep turn and the car almost tilts. “Holy shit! How fast are you going?”

“I’m going the speed limit!”

They go downhill and in front of them, a truck loses control and speeds into an offshoot that is designed _exactly for that purpose._ Isaac zips past it and groans when they come up behind a stack of cars who actually are going the speed limit. 

“We have to go back this way,” Isaac says. 

“We have to go through the other side of the valley in the morning.”

“Fucking nice.” 

As quickly as they entered the mountains they leave it, and get gridlocked traffic going towards a city that looks much smaller than his podcasts made it out to be.

“Hit me with your Salt Lake knowledge,” Stiles requests. 

“Their liquor laws are totally different than anyone else. You can’t buy anything but beer in grocery stores, and the ones they do sell are lower points, even national brands. All their liquor stores are owned and operated by the state government."

“No.”

“They’re called State Liquor Stores. Literally.” 

“Disgusting, and bad for people like me prone to not trusting the government. Okay. Goals for Salt Lake City," Stiles starts.

"I want to convert to the Latter Day Saints," Isaac says, "I think religion is what's missing from my life and now is the time to start."

"Fully agree, your heathen ways have to end and I have good news. We're Mormons now. It happened when we crossed the state line," Stiles says, "Try again."

"Dilute the Salt Lake," Isaac tries.

"Oooh that's good. I want to dilute the salt flats."

"Dilute the fountain."

"What if they don't have a fountain? What are you going to do then, Lahey?"

"It's a city, they have a fountain somewhere."

"A salt lake fountain?"

"All their water is salt lake water."

They're checked into their hotel by five. Stiles picked a hotel that looks decidedly less haunted than the one in Colorado. The beds are somehow shorter than normal beds, and the entire place is done in light wood with geometric shapes painted on in black. 

Stiles pulls him off the bed when he tries to lie down. "Nope, we have two stops before we can sleep."

"You're so mean," Isaac whines. 

They take a trolley--an actual red trolley like from Mister Rogers but with people in it and wooden benches. It sounds like he thought a train would. He doesn't understand why being on a real trolley makes him so happy it feels like he might burst but it does. The train is too crowded and the city is too unfamiliar for him to risk kissing Stiles, so he settles for reaching into Stiles coat and twisting his hoodie strings in his fingers. It's somehow more intimate than a kiss would have been.

"This isn't even the first surprise," Stiles says, sounding pleased.

The first surprise is Temple Square. The trolley stops in from of a looming temple with three sharp points, lit up like the Eiffel Tower. There's a wall blocking it off the entire length of the street except for one entrance.

"Any random podcast knowledge to drop about the Temple?" Stiles asks. Isaac lets go of Stiles's hoodie strings and shakes his head. "That's fine. Our real stop is inside." 

"I don't want to see some geeky Mormon history thing."

"That's so not what this is."

"I'm serious, I was joking earlier."

"Were you really joking about converting to LDS? Were you really?" 

They walk inside and immediately are surrounded by Christmas lights. Every tree and every bush is wrapped in hundreds of white lights that light the courtyard up rendering the footlights along the path redundant. Stiles loops his hand around his wrist and leads him onto the walkway. 

"After we did up our apartment I started looking for some kind of Christmas lights extravaganza. Since you morally object to zoos Lincoln Park was out but _viola._ This is the Christmas lights capital west of the Mississippi." 

They find red trees, giant red trees with thousands of lights looped over every twig. There's a giant fountain with light-up figures and it takes him too long to figure out that they are supposed to be Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Gold balls float in the water and Stiles reaches out like he's trying to touch them.

"Thank you," Isaac says, meaning it.

Despite not wanting to see some geeky Mormon history thing, it’s Isaac’s idea to go into a visitor center. There’s a display with areas with Jesus’s life that light up when you press buttons corresponding with the event in that location. They spend a while there. Isaac knows some Jesus stories from the History Channel, and it’s odd to be around people for whom this has more meaning than a probably inaccurate diorama.

“Does this mean anything to you?” he asks Stiles. Stiles went to church with his dad, and he mentioned “failing out of Sunday school” once. 

“Eh,” he says, “not really. I know a Polish song that summarizes the crucifixion, wanna hear it?” 

“Yes.”

Stiles immediately starts singing, and loudly. He doesn’t stop until Isaac steps up to him and presses his hand over his mouth. 

“That was hot as hell,” he whispers in Stiles’ ear. “But I need you to stop so I don’t mount you in this very sacred place.” 

When they've seen every single light on the block they stop for burgers. The restaurant they find has craft beer and good music. 

"This place is better than I expected," Isaac admits, "If we weren't gay as shit I'd say we should move here. I mean here to this restaurant."

Stiles starts to talk, swallows the bite of his burger, takes another bite, then finally says, "Big news about surprise number two. We're going to a gay bar in the gay district to get our gay on."

"There's a gay district?"

"They built it just for us."

At the club, Stiles pounds two shots of whiskey and dances up and down the dance floor. The place Stiles chose is smaller than the bars they frequent back home, and it's easier to talk over the music. Isaac starts off dancing with him, but after a few drinks, Stiles's dancing style becomes more of a solo number so the stands to the side watching Stiles dance with a woman at least forty years older than them. 

On the Uber back the hotel Stiles unbuckles his seatbelt and sidles up against him. Isaac maneuvers his arm around him and Stiles presses his head against his chest. "We're going to be there tomorrow," Stiles says sleepily.

"Not if we move here," Isaac argues, "Then we don't have to go anywhere."

Stiles sighs. "We'll decide in the morning." 


	6. Chapter 6

For the last eight hours of the trip, they listen to NPR. Not crappy local NPR that Stiles vetoes in the possibility that it might be run by aliens, but the best of podcasts that Isaac loaded on his iPod. He hasn’t shown Stiles Buzz yet, the radio host whose entire show archive is on a dedicated iPod in his suitcase. NPR is almost as good. This happens because once the magic of the Utah trolley wears off and California is visible on their GPS Isaac's teeth are on edge.

He knows exactly how much time he spent with Stiles’ dad in the summer when he came to visit, and he knows it’s not as much as Stiles wanted him too. Spending time with someone else’s dad isn’t his favorite thing to do, even though logically he’s had extremely good outcomes. It probably doesn't help that the first time he met a significant other's dad, he was threatened with gun violence. Chris insisted normal adults do not threaten others and apologized for the nine hundredth time and pointed out that Stiles’ dad was by all reports perfectly nice. 

“I’m not good at judging people, I thought Stiles was an asshole and I thought you hated me,” he told Chris a few nights before he and Stiles left. He made an excuse to go to Briarwood and then made an excuse to stay at Chris’ apartment for three hours. 

“Well,” Chris said, “I wasn’t happy when I thought you were a man in your twenties in Allison’s bedroom, and your impression of Stiles wasn’t totally wrong. But you’ve had breakfast with Stiles’ father and spent some time in a car with him. Stiles mentioned you did not necessarily talk to him either time. So you may not have a complete impression of him, and he might not of you.” 

And Isaac is not good at first impressions. He takes forever to talk, or he talks too much and offends people. Boyd once summed it up as "When Isaac meets someone he looks like he's 90% assessing how hard he'd have to work to kill them." He thought he was getting better at that with age, but given that Stiles was in the room when Boyd said it and laughed until he was gasping for breath, he had not.

Since he can't go for a run and Stiles doesn't know about his stash, NPR is the best tool he has to deal with it. He must not be hiding it all very well because Stiles doesn't complain when he starts a new episode of Invisbilia without offering to switch to music. 

Isaac doesn't know if he actually likes podcasts, or if he just likes the way the host's voices let him tune out everything except the yellow dashed lines on the pavement disappearing under the car. Sometimes he doesn’t know he’s even listened to a podcast until he hears himself telling Stiles or Allison a fact he learned from it. 

In must be a world record feat of self-restraint Stiles is quiet all through Nevada. He's on his laptop most of the way, wrapping up a last-minute project--"Without wifi or data which makes me a 1990's level programming genius"--and only occasionally interrupts with comments on the story they're listening to that make no sense.

"Do you think there's legal precedent to selling a gnome collection?" Stiles says

"What?" Isaac forces himself to key back into what's happening in the car, and draw up which podcast they are listening to so he can respond correctly. It had to be #117 What To Do?, which was about dying without a will. "Oh, yeah. Probably not."

"What episode are we listening to?" Stiles asks.

"#117 What to Do" Isaac replies immediately.

"Uh huh," Stiles says, totally onto his shit. "We're switching drivers. We're only half an hour away anyway, and I want to re-experience my youth." Jesus Christ, he only had half an hour to figure out how to not screw this up.

"So," Stiles says as he pulls out of the gas station and onto the ramp "we've been driving for three days. We've laughed. We haven't cried, but that's because we're too afflicted by toxic masculinity to. We've both lost our phone chargers. Goals for California?"

Isaac turns off the stereo, "This is weird for you too right? You and your dad have your routines and we're crashing it."

If Stiles was thrown off that Isaac isn't playing the goals game he doesn't show it. "Eh, our Christmases are ebby and flowy. We do our usual schtick, sometimes Scott and his mom are part of it and sometimes we order Chinese and watch Star Wars. Lately that, so we're due for a spice up. Honestly honestly honestly I think it's going to be really good."

"Do you like Allison and Chris though?"

"I do like Allison and I do no longer think that Chris hates me."

"No, listen--"

"I'm kidding, it's cool that they're there and I assume they'll want to cook everything which is great because I don't know if we've turned on my dad's oven since 2004. Plus, plus I get to show you all around Beacon Hills."

"And you're sure you're fine with being in Beacon Hills?"

"Trauma brain wise?" Stiles says, using a term he got from his new therapist that they used frequently and only half sarcastically. "Yeah, you know I lived here a long time after it all, and I've been back before and we're not going to go caroling at the psych hospital. How's your trauma brain?"

Isaac's trauma brain was wondering when he went from a mysterious hostile guy on a train to someone how got asked about his trauma brain. "I'm fine, just worried your dad won't want to pay your dowry after meeting me."

"Uh, I thought we established that Chris would be paying the dowry thank you very much. Even if my dad was paying the dowry--which he will not because he is a public servant and your dad is a gun lord--he's not going to change his mind about liking you."

"I'm not great at meeting people."

"That is not true because as far as I can tell everyone you choose to have any kind of relationship with is obsessed with you. Do you want to like, hide in another crappy motel tonight and meet everyone tomorrow?"

"I thought we were going to your house to see everyone."

"Yeah, but we don't have to have to."

They approach and exit sign reading "Beacon Hills" and Stiles turns onto the exit ramp without any fanfare. Stiles is looking around, tracking familiar scenery but he's holding back and Isaac realizes it's on his account. "I think it'll be okay if we just do it now. Allison says everyone's at the house waiting for us. She said they're making ornaments."

Very quickly the interstate turned into a two-lane highway surrounded by nothing but forest. It was dense and dark and Stiles paid it no attention. "Okay cool, we're having a tree this year! It's going to be chill. My dad and Melissa will  _ definitely _ hug you. Like, we’ll have to call ahead to tell them not to. We can though."

They're so close and Isaac suddenly realizes that of all the conversations about meeting Stiles' parents there was one that they missed that has the potential fuck things up from the beginning, "What should I call them?" he asks frantically.

"We haven't talked about this?" Stiles says, not sounding nearly alarmed enough. "Well, I don't know. Malia called them Mr. Stilinski and Mrs. McCall but that was because we were in high school."

"I'm not going to  _ meet Malia _ am I?"

"No, I think she’s overseas right now. I guarantee you will never meet her. But anyway, uh, I don't know? Melissa will tell you to call her Melissa. What do you call my dad when you talk to him on the phone?"

"Sir."

"Oh my god. Well, I bet he loves that, but that maaaybe will not fly on Christmas morning. Uh, Noah?"

It took weeks for him to decide to test out calling his dad “Chris” and that was after living with him for months. That’s not happening this week.

"I don't think I'm going to do that."

The forest abruptly turns into the edge of an overlit commercial area and Stiles drives a few blocks then turns into another wooded area. "I don't know, Mr. S? Creator of my beloved? It's not a big deal. I don't think I know what to call Chris. I actually don't think I call him anything to his face. Not even sir. Just 'hey you, pass the salt.'"

"Scott calls him Chris. You could too, I think. What does Scott call your dad?'

The car turns into a residential area. All the houses are narrow and tall, built into small hills with sloping driveways. The roads are lit by floodlights and it's easy to picture Scott and Stiles as kids running down the wide empty streets. Stiles barely watches the road as he drives, he's taken this route thousands of times. He makes a face while he thinks. "I think he calls him Sheriff."

Great, another reminder that Stiles's dad is a cop. "I don't think I'm going to do that either."

"Well you can ask him yourself," Stiles says. The car turns into the driveway of a white house with two other cars in the driveway. There's a basketball hoop with a clean net over the garage door and Isaac stares at it while he tries to figure out how to wipe off the sweat on his palms. Stiles unbuckles his seatbelt but doesn't get out of the car. "Are we ready?"

Isaac unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the car. "Let's go."

The house is set into a small hill, and their suitcases clack against the steps as they pull them up. "Tell the truth," Stiles says, "Is this the first time your great prairie heart has ever seen a hill?"

"It is," Isaac plays along as though he hadn't literally driven through mountains this morning. "I'm getting altitude sickness. Go on without me."

Stiles reaches the top of the steps first and he checks the mailbox, seemingly out of habit. The front door is open and for a full twenty seconds, they stand in the entryway with their bags. There's a lacrosse stick leaning in the corner by the door, like Stiles had just gone out for a walk ten years ago would be back any minute. Stiles quietly puts his suitcase down on the stairs and Isaac follows suit. Somewhere Christmas music is playing. To the right, there's noise in the living room, and from where he's standing he can just see the back of Allison's head.

Someone yells "The guys are here!" then suddenly there are people. The house is warm and bright and there are so many people in the entryway rushing to hug them that Isaac dimly wonders if they heard about a crash on the highway and were convinced they may have died until this moment. It's Allison first, hugging him with one arm because she has a drink in the other hand, then Scott, thumping him twice on that back because Scott does that because he played sports in high school and then Chris.

Once he sees Chris he latches on, sending him stumbling back to regain his balance. Part of him was sure that Chris had changed his mind about coming, even when the texts started rolling in in Reno. Chris squeezes his shoulder and pulls back, scanning his face like he's trying to make sure he still has two eyes.

"Good trip?"

"Good," Isaac agrees.

"Good," Just a few away Stiles hugs his father and quickly pulls back to show him something on his phone. His father is taller than Chris, and he's wearing a loud red and green checked shirt. Chris notices him looking. He leans forward and quietly says "He uses imitation vanilla in the egg nog,"

While Isaac is sure that Chris really is a bit horrified that someone isn't using vanilla bean, much less pure vanilla extract, he understands the message. The most threatening thing that Chris, master of the threat assessment, has found about Stiles's father is his egg nog.

Then Stiles's hand is on his shoulder and he says, "Look hey, I didn't accidentally leave him in Nebraska!" Isaac dutifully shifts his focus and makes eye contact with Stiles's father. He makes the split-second decision to call him Mr. Stilinski. He offers his hand to shake and Mr. Stilinski takes it firmly, smiling warmly. He has a good handshake, and when they're done he lets go and pulls Isaac into a real hug.

Before Isaac figures out how he wants to react to that, Mr. Stilinski pats him twice on the back and pulls away. "We're so glad you boys made it." Over Mr. Stilinski's shoulder, Stiles is bouncing around a making a face that seems to mean, "see I told you so"

As predicted, Melissa hugs him too and it's a relief when Stiles pulls focus by presenting his father with the novelty NOAH license plates he picked up in every state. Mr. Stilinski sorts through them and says, "Well now I regret getting a Christmas tree, this is all the decoration we need," he shows the especially gaudy Wyoming one to Isaac and Chris, "There's a reason we never took Stiles on road trips growing up. I'm impressed you're still standing."

So far about nineteen of the scenarios Isaac expected haven't happened, and they're off to a good start. "Yeah, we had to start a quiet time rule in Iowa, otherwise I would have lost it," he jokes.

"Hey now!" Stiles says, standing between the two of them like he's trying to dispel something. "You two ganging up on me was not part of the deal. Now, come on, let's go to the living room and talk about how awesome I am." Stiles hooks his arm around Isaac's waist and leads him into the living room. When they have some space away from everyone he whispers, "Did Chris just diss my dad's vanilla?"

"Imitation vanilla," Isaac corrects.

"Your family is so much weirder than mine."


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles assimilated to California the second they crossed the state line. It was 60 degrees outside--60 degrees on December 23rd---and Stiles wore a sweatshirt to bed and slept burrowed under two blankets. He was also sound asleep at 6 in the morning even though it was 8 AM in Chicago and they would normally be awake. It was dark outside and the street lights bounced lights off the tops of the boxes in Stiles room.

The night before they painted ornaments with a kit Melissa had been given by a patient. Melissa acted like she'd known Allison and Isaac for years and didn't acknowledge that their presence was weird beyond asking about the trip. She and Allison connected right away, and they abandoned their ornaments to talk about how to improve medical access for undocumented and refugee populations. 

Mr. Stilinski, on the other hand, seemed hyper-aware he had guests, and he popped in and out announcing when he found sheets for the pullout couch in his office for Chris, and kept making microwave popcorn that only Scott and Stiles ate.

"Dad Jesus just sit down, we're not the queen" Stiles demanded and his dad said, "I sure know that, the queen would have better manners."

Isaac wasn’t sure if Mr. Stilinski was going to object to him sleeping in Stiles’ bed. He never spent the night at Danny’s house, but his parents didn’t want them in the room with the door closed even when Danny would come home for college. Chris didn’t have rules beyond not having sex in the living room, which was almost worse than having too many rules. 

But Mr. Stilinski just said, “You know he talks in his sleep, right?” and Isaac said, “Yes, I feel like I should start taking notes though, it’s almost poetic,” and Mr. Stilinski grinned and asked him to pick between the firm and soft pillows. 

The last time Stiles had been in his room was before he even knew he would move to Chicago, so there was no previous effort to make it new boyfriend ready. It was clear that his room had been sporadically occupied but hadn't been substantially changed since he was in high school. The walls were green and purple, and one wall was nearly covered with concert tickets and photocopied pages from Stiles's favorite comic books. There was a giant decal of what looked like a snowboarding anime character hanging over Stiles's double bed.

"Was this your first boyfriend?" Isaac asked.

Stiles got on his knees on the bed and reached up to tap the anime guy on the chest. "Yeah, I hope you don't object to sharing the bed with him too."

In the dark, the anime guy looked like a villain in a horror movie, and Isaac wondered how it had survived Stiles's first psychotic episode when it's presence is so fucking creepy. At 6:07 he wakes up to find the sticker staring at him. "Stiles," he says, in a barely loud respectful voice. "Stiles wake up right now."

He doesn't wake up because Stiles is a fucking asshole. Isaac tries one more time to respectfully wake up Stiles by kicking him, but Stiles snores on so Isaac crawls over him and pulls on his shoes. 

If Isaac is awake, Chris would be awake too and probably has been awake for hours. After Chris determined that the only motel in Beacon County was "unacceptable" they decided that he would stay in the Stilinski house. Both Melissa and Mr. Stilinski offered to host him, but Chris said that Allison would object to him staying with her, and it went without saying that Isaac would not. 

He finds Chris in the kitchen, fumbling with a standard-issue coffee maker.

"You sleep?" Chris asks, not taking his focus off the plastic filter he was trying to jam into the machine. Isaac reaches over and turns it 10 degrees and it drops in.

"Yep. What time did you wake up?"

"I already went for a run but I'll go again if you want to. The terrain is ideal."

That means between two and three AM. 

"You want to go on a second run?" Isaac asks digging sleep out of his eye. The jetlag thing and his inability to operate standard household appliances were all that kept Chris from being a cartoon GI Joe sometimes.

"Yes, it's 60 degrees out, perfect running weather. I could go a few more miles, I came back because I thought you might be awake."

And that. GI Joes don't do that. "I think Stiles was planning on giving me the grand tour. It would probably be upset if I saw the sights without him."

Chris finally has the water in the coffee machine and set to trying to find coffee beans. Hopefully, Mr. Stilinski doesn’t grind his own beans, because a grinder would wake up their hosts. "Did you look in here?" Chris says as he moves from cabinet to cabinet. "You're not going to like it."

Mr. Stilinski explained that he was pulling doubles all week and didn't have the chance to shop for guests, but based on how he shopped, in general, it wasn't going to be a good thing. His diet consisted of frozen dinners, crackers and leftover fries. No fruit, not even the gross bagged kind Erica used for smoothies. Isaac didn't like it, but he knew Stiles wouldn't either. Stiles ended every phone conversation by quizzing his dad about what he would eat for dinner, and citing studies about heart disease in the elderly. Stiles--who in Isaac's opinion had a similarly garbage diet--would freak out if he saw that this was how his dad was eating. 

“We could just eat scrambled eggs for the whole week,” Isaac suggests, “We might not get scurvy, and if we do then we were due for some karma.”

"I volunteered to go grocery shopping," Chris says, "Being that there's no coffee to be found or appropriate breakfast foods we should go now." 

Isaac is aware he has a trust fund coming on his thirtieth birthday. He owns more designer clothes than he’d like to admit, and is capable of ordering in French when they go to restaurants as a family. But he still grew up in a house with duct tape holding kitchen cabinets on, in a town where he got a toothbrush every year on the first day of school. 

He is still blown away by the way Chris buys food. 

Chris never looks at prices, or stands in front of the potato pile calculating how much it would cost to buy two potatoes instead of one. He moves quickly down the aisles, pulling brand name seasoning pots into the cart, grumbling about the limited selection. He buys ingredients, not box mixes and seems to intuitively know exactly what he needs.

Once Isaac pointed out how quickly he was able to choose things, and Chris laughed and said, "That's only because I spend three times as long making a list." 

The weirdest part of grocery shopping with Chris is how calm he is at checkout. The first time Isaac went grocery shopping with Chris he wasn't living with him yet, so he didn't fully understand how different Chris's life was from his parents. At checkout when the total came out to $163.71, Isaac was ready to bolt. But Chris didn't yell at the clerk or panic and pull the expensive stuff out of his bags, he just swiped his card and said "We'll have to go straight home so the ice cream doesn't melt."

Years after the first trip Isaac still finds novelty in shopping with Chris. They find a superstore that is just opening at 7 AM. Chris dislikes superstores but grabs the oversized blue cart anyway and starts piling vegetables in. Chris chooses ingredients for a few meals and items he knew Isaac and Allison liked. He picks up spicy popcorn for Scott too, and the same brand of frozen cheeseburgers that were in Mr. Stilinski’s fridge. Isaac goes ahead of him and throws things he knows Stiles likes in the cart. 

Chris catches up with him in the frozen section where Isaac is trying to figure out which toaster waffle has the fewest preservatives. "What are you doing now?" Chris says, not meaning what Isaac was doing at that very second. 

"White stuff," Isaac admits. “I think meat, too.” It’s been going for weeks, and he hasn’t told anyone. He'd always been a picky eater, but sometimes after he came to Chicago it morphed from not liking crusts to feeling low riding anxiety that sometimes evolved into paralyzing fear if he ate specific things his brain arbitrarily decided was bad. It didn't take a therapist to notice that it got worse when he was stressed out, but everyone sure wanted him to find a therapist to tell him that. 

"’ White stuff’ is an old one," Chris observes. 

"I ate pizza on the way here," Isaac counters, not sure what argument he's trying to make, "I'm pretty sure none of the therapists around here take my insurance, so there's nothing we can do about it now."

“I agree,” Chris says easily, “This isn’t the time for big challenges. I do think you would eventually benefit from trying to figure out what’s going on, but not this week.” 

They’d had a similar but much longer conversation about flying to California. Chris is big on strategic risks, which was probably why he was so exasperated with all the non-strategic risks he and Allison took over the years. “Sorry,” Isaac offered, “I think I’m worried Mr. Stilinski will notice and think I’m weird.”

“I don’t think he will, but if he does, I’ll take the blame,” Chris says, arranging the sweet potatoes he stacked in the baby seat, “I’ll say I raised you to be a snob.” 

Of course, Isaac was raised to eat frozen dinners, crackers and leftover fries and Chris had nothing to do with it, but he had no problem with Chris pretending if he was willing to. “If there’s anything you should take the blame for it’s Allison saying French words correctly. It’s a national embarrassment.” 

“If those are the biggest parenting mistakes I’ve made I’d say you two turned out pretty well,” Chris says.

They get back to the house just as Mr. Stilinski is waking up and he is thrilled with the haul. He clearly doesn’t eat most of the food regularly and tries to put the wrong fruit in the fridge, so Chris quietly follows him around the kitchen sticking tomatoes on the counter and the eggs in the fridge. Stiles comes down complaining about all the noise.

“It’s 10 AM at home,” Isaac informs him, “We’re doing you a service by waking you up.”

Stiles blinks in the kitchen doorway, taking in the adults putting groceries away and Isaac standing with a jacket over his pajamas. “Had to get that pure vanilla, huh?”

“No we have vanilla,” Mr. Stilinski says, “We didn’t use it all last night.”

Stiles yawns. “It’s a metaphor, Dad. These two are all about the metaphor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Why isn't Isaac Argent Lahey eating white stuff](https://rudeflower.tumblr.com/post/189784582480/hey-this-is-about-my-mental-illness-and-teen-wolf/)


	8. Chapter 8

Since he’s awake “abso-fucking-lutely way too early” Stiles falls asleep on the couch during breakfast and doesn’t wake up again for an hour. Which leaves Isaac in the kitchen with Mr. Stilinski while Chris takes a shower. 

He has never wanted Chris to shower less.

Mr. Stilinski contentedly eats the scrambled eggs Chris made but picks at the tofu sausage. “Did you boys have a good time on the drive?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Isaac says, “We stopped in Colorado and Utah. I’d never been to either one.”

“Have you travelled much?” Mr. Stilinski asks.

Isaac shrugs. “Some. My family used to go on road trips, but we mostly went to the south, or Canada.”

Mr. Stilinski nods, “I’ve never been to Canada myself. Stiles always wanted us to go to Vancouver, but could you imagine that kid in a car for 13 hours? It would be a nightmare.” 

“Yeah,” Isaac agrees to agree. “He was great on the drive though. He tried to get me to play games. I mean, I played them because he wanted to,” he hurries to say, not wanting to seem like he doesn’t respect Stiles and what he wants.

“That was very good of you,” Mr. Stilinski says. He picks up a piece of tofu sausage like he’s about to eat it then makes a face and puts it down. “Stiles would love if I would eat this,” he says, “But I can never bring myself to eat tofu.”

“Tofu is great,” Isaac says like an idiot, “It’s really good for you, and it’s a good replacement for most meats.”

“I like you son,” Mr. Stilinski says, “But I don’t know that I believe you on that.” 

“Oh,” Isaac says, “Sorry.”

Mr. Stilinski raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. “No need to apologize. Meat is meat, nothing can replace it, no matter what Stiles says.”

“Do you know what bacon can replace?” Stiles says from the doorway, rubbing his eyes, “A living life. Eat your tosage, Dad. It’s good for you.”

Mr. Stilniski beams at Stiles even though he’s being totally disrespectful. “Son, I will eat what I want to eat, that’s the reward I get for being an adult.”

“Yeah and you think I didn’t notice that you had nothing but frozen food before the Argent Lahey tag team bought you  _ eggs?  _ No-sir-ee you are not responsible enough to pick your own food.”

Isaac looks back at Mr. Stilinski for a sign that he’s taking this badly, but he just smiles indulgently at Stiles and takes a bite for the sausage and chews laboriously.

“Thanks you,” Stiles says, “was that so hard?”

  
  


\---- 

  
  


"You are never allowed to make fun of my car again."

They're in Mr. Stilinski's garage trying to find windshield wiper fluid but Isaac isn't helping because he's distracted by the Jeep's engine. Stiles always talked about his Jeep dying like it was a great and avoidable tragedy which it clearly was not. The engine's held together by duct tape and twine--literally. Isaac knew next to nothing about cars. He paid Boyd to save the day every time his Toyota broke down in the middle of the street and tuned out his lectures on what exactly went wrong. Even knowing nothing, looking at the Jeep's he suspects that it was so gummed up that it was as likely to run on Capri Sun as gasoline.

"I am so allowed to make fun of your car. That's what I drove in high school--you are a full grown adult."

"You literally taped the engine together."

"Your rear windows are permanently rolled down. That plastic's doing nothing, you're going to come home to a Christmas village in your back seat."

" _ Tape. _ "

"Again--high school. If I told my dad it broke down all the time he would have made me stop driving it. You should be praising my engineity. Get it?"

Isaac shuts the hood. “Why is it still here? It should be in a dump somewhere.”

Stiles doesn’t answer immediately, he takes some time moving aside boxes before coming up with a bottle of wiper fluid. He hands it to Isaac. “It was my mom’s first. It’s not so easy to get rid of it.”

“Oh shit,” Isaac says, “I’m sorry.”

Stiles shrugs. “You didn’t know. If it wasn’t my mom’s car yeah, I probably wouldn’t have been driving it for so long. But it was.”

“You never told me that.”

“I try to keep some sense of mystery so you’ll hang around. Hope this tour of my hometown doesn’t blow it.”

It doesn’t. It actually makes Stiles more mysterious.

He drives with one hand, pointing with the other to landmarks of varying potential significance. He points out where he once saw a dog off a leash and didn’t do anything about it, only to see reward signs for the same dog for $1,000 dollars because half the town is inexplicably rich as fuck. 

He points casually to the police station and says “That’s where Scott got shot,” almost in the same breath as he says, “That’s where the ice cream truck stopped in summer except they never had teenage mutant ninja ice cream.”

They pull into the parking lot of Stiles’ high school. Stiles seems to think for a minute and then says, “Let’s not like, get out but  _ ta-da.  _ Beacon Hills High School.”

Isaac cranes his head. “Are those lockers outside?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Like, all year round? I can feel you gearing up to refer to my ‘prairie heart’ but that is actually weird. Anyone off the street could break into your locker, or walk up to some kids.” 

Stiles shrugged. “Yeah, but it wasn’t like there was an adult man hanging out in our parking lot.”

Isaac doesn’t mention the time Derek arrived way too early to pick him up from school his first year at Briarwood High, and the office called him up to verify that this was in fact his guardian and they shouldn’t call the police. 

“Do you think we would have been friends in high school?” he asks. Stiles screws his face up like he’s thinking extremely hard. “We were both athletes,” he points out. 

“You were an athlete, I was a benchwarmer. I literally only did lacrosse to hang out with Scott. And I mean, this may shock you to hear, I was kind of a loser. In the beginning I was just this like, spastic geek who was overly fixated on one girl. Then I was the crazy kid who disappeared for two months and everyone knew exactly why. I wasn’t exactly nominated prom king after that.” 

Isaac reaches over and pokes Stiles in the face. “You said some mean things about one of my favorite people.” 

“Scott.” 

“ _ You.  _ I wasn’t getting prom king nominations either. I beat up this really popular kid, like, multiple times. Allison’s friends didn’t even like me.” 

Stiles seems to consider this. “Okay, so we would have been losers together.” 

“Yes. Just like now.” 

The tour ends at a wooded area where Stiles explains that he and Scott would drink whiskey they stole from Mr. Stilinski’s “shame closet.” The area loverlooks at valley that Isaac doesn’t even remember coming up from. It’s one of a thousand odd things from the tour. 

“Your town is so fucking weird,” he says while they’re driving back to the house. 

“Please say more,” Stiles says, “Hit me with that classic Isaac Lahey reductive analysis.”

“You have an abandoned mall, a functioning mall. You have a fucking zoo that just randomly shows up at the end of town. But I think that’s abandoned too?”

“It is. Please keep going.”

“Half of the town is abandoned but the other half is just huge houses? Your school is tiny, but it’s the only one in town which is big enough to hold three gay clubs. I don’t get the economics of this place.” 

“No one does,” Stiles says gleeful. “It’s a mystery town. It makes no sense.”

They’re driving through a nice residential area and Stiles gestures to who lived where, and Isaac interrupts him. 

“Do you want to live here?”

“My dad wants me to live here,” he says immediately. “And I love my dad but there’s not really any industry here, nothing for me to do.” He looks over at Isaac before cutting back to the road. “There’s no one I’m obsessed with here either.”

It occurs to Isaac that he should offer that if Stiles wanted to live here, he would come with him. But they aren’t really at that point, and Beacon Hills is fucking weird so he stays quiet and watches the trees go by. 


	9. Chapter 9

They end up at Melissa’s house—a huge blue house with wood detailing and warm comfortable furniture. Scott and Allison are in the living room making paper snowflakes. Stiles immediately kicks off his shoes and drops his jacket on the floor, making himself at home right away. He moves through the house the same way he did at his dad’s house, like he belongs here. He jumps down a step into the living room and picks up a pair of scissors. 

“We’re doing the snowflake thing?” he says, “Nice.”

Isaac trails after him. He stands unsure of what to do. They can’t honestly be making paper snowflakes, but that’s what is happening. Stiles looks up from where he settled on the floor. 

“Dude,” he says, “Come make snowflakes with us.”

Before he has to make a decision, Melissa emerges from down the hall and says, "Hey, is there a professional baker in the house who can help me back here? 

He looks at Stiles for any sign of what this could be about. Stiles doesn’t notice for a second, then he glances up and notices that Isaac is staring at him desperately. 

“Dude it’s so fine, Melissa is the nicest person on the planet. Go in there, she might have cookies.” Stiles says dude way more here than he does at home. 

Isaac hesitates for an embarrassing second that catches Scott and Allison’s attention, so he walks across the house and into the kitchen. 

Melissa is making cookies or trying to. She grins at him and tips a mixing bowl towards his view, showing dry, cracked dough. “Any chance you know how to fix this?”

He does, and he loves her for a moment for giving him something to do that he isn’t garbage at. Without many words, he takes the dough out of the bowl and separates it into fractions. Melissa lets him, standing to the side with a mug of coffee. She offers him some.

“I don’t use caffeine,” he says. 

“Really?” she says, “Even with all those years working the night shift?”

How much does she know about him? “No,” he says, “It takes control of my sleep out of my hands, and I didn’t want that.”

Melissa nods, “Let me tell you, when you start working as a nurse you might change your tune. The coffee machine in the nurse’s lounge broke and we almost had a nursing strike on our hands.”

Isaac hums noncommittally and grabs some oil. He splashes it over one ball of dough and does the same to another, geustring to Melissa to follow his lead. He kneads the dough and the texture turns beautiful and smooth and he feels satisfied to see it turn consistent and even and _right._

“Do you start your clinicals next semester?” Melissa asks. 

Isaac shakes his head, keeping his eye on the next ball of dough. “I have some more classes, then clinicals.”

“Are you looking forward to that?” Melissa asks. Isaac searches for the rolling pin so he can start cutting out shapes. “I remember when I was in nursing school I couldn’t wait to get out of those classes and out in the field.”

For some reason, he starts feeling dizzy, but he pushes through it. 

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Isaac says honestly. He can’t wait to get out of the classes—they’re boring as hell and require too much memorization without enough to hold onto. But he hadn’t thought as far as someone letting him be around a patient. When he thought about his future in nursing he pictured himself driving home in scrubs and changing out of them and making muffins. 

“You will,” Melissa says, “And remember, you can always talk to me about any weird patient stories or bad professors.” She puts her hand on his shoulder. “It will be nice to have another nurse in the family.”

It’s simultaneously the nicest and scariest thing anyone has said to him since landing in Beacon Hills. 

Allison comes in to get coffee, then stays to help him cut shapes. Melissa keeps smiling and talking about a program she found online last night that Allison might be interested in, and Isaac doesn’t focus too much on any of it until Melissa walks out and Allison says, _“Isaac”_ in a whisper that implies a secret. 

“ _What?”_ he whispers back. 

Allison looks down the hall to make sure no one is nearby. “Can we talk about how _nice_ these people are.” 

He knows exactly what she means. Mr. Stilinski seems preoccupied if whether the thermostat is meeting his and Chris’ expectations, Melissa acted completely wowed when Isaac fixed the dough, and it wasn’t even close to an impressive skill. 

“Danny's parents--they weren’t mean to me but at least I knew where I stood. Mr. Stilinski keeps saying nice stuff--he’s a _cop._ ”

“Right yes, okay,” Allison nods, “totally different issue, but I feel like I have to tell Melissa a bunch of bad stuff about me just to get to who she really is.” 

“It’s like they think we’re in kindergarten,” Isaac says. 

Allison widens her eyes and nods. “I like, oh my God. Melissa keeps looking things up for me. She thinks I want to start a brand new organization, or something? I feel like I can’t tell her I don’t, because she thinks I’m this great nice person and I can’t bear to tell her she’s wrong.” 

“You’re not nice,” Isaac agrees. 

“No, I’m not. I’m generous and driven and committed and--”

“Humble.” 

“Yes. But not nice. We’re not nice people.”

Isaac takes his turn to look down the hall to see if anyone is listening, but they’re all talking in the living room about snowflakes. “Dad is nice.” 

“Dad is _not_ nice. Dad is kind and giving.” 

“I’m not nice.” 

“No, you absolutely are not nice. You are, however, very loyal and loving. But these people--” Allison shakes her head. “I can’t tell if they actually like us. It’s stressful.” 

He knows it’s a failing, but sometimes he thinks that Allison had a perfect life. He never met her mom, but Allison missed her in this aching, painful way that made him assume she was wonderful and present and _good._ Allison knew that, and it was sometimes the thing they fought most about. 

“I know you think Dad hung the moon,” she said once a few years ago, when Chris accidentally asked both of them to pick him up from the airport, and they both ended up back at the apartment while he slept, “But he is an extreme person. You don’t think so, but he is. And he was worse when I was a kid.” 

He started to disagree but Allison cut him off. “Look you--I know it’s not nice of me to bring up but I’ve witnessed a lot more years. When I was a kid we did armageddon drills. He wouldn’t let me go to friend’s houses, and he wouldn't let me have friends over. Right before my mom died, she would follow me around. Okay? I’ve been scared too. I don’t mean to compare us, but Dad isn’t a magic person.” 

He didn’t speak to her for three weeks. It wasn’t nice, but as they established, neither was he. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew that if Allison was willing to say she’d been scared sometimes growing up, that meant that like him, she found some people confusing. 

Melissa breezes in, and hums happily when she sees the cookies Allison just took out of the oven. “Your dad is on the way,” she tells them, “I have the fixings for sandwiches, so let’s condense the cookie stuff.” 

Allison turns to him, “What has Dad been doing?”

Isaac shrugs, “I don’t know, what does he ever do? Maybe he’s already got a contract here?”

Melissa frowns, “I don’t think your dad could already have work here.” 

Allison turns to her and smiles. Allison isn’t nice, but she’s always been flawless at social cues. “You’re right, it is unrealistic. Can I help you get lunch ready? Isaac and I aren’t into deli meat, but we’re always able to find something. I saw some frozen veggie patties, could we put those on the stove?” 

Melissa agrees and goes to retrieve them. “You’ve never been a vegetarian,” he whispers. “You’re being nice.”

“No, I’m being loyal and loving. Never nice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loooooove some Argent Lahey sibling bonding. It is the 23rd in the United States today, and I do not think I will post again until the 26th. I have some stuff going on!!! But there is still a lot of content to come.


	10. Chapter 10

They stay at Melissa’s house until dinner—a ton of Chinese food that probably cost a fortune. Chris helped order and magically there are two dishes that Isaac can eat, and he does, sitting next to Stiles on a narrow loveseat. 

Mr. Stilinski can’t stop smiling and half the time when anyone else is talking to him he’s looking at Stiles, like he’s keeping an eye on him. Chris talks to Melissa and Isaac catches him smiling while he does. It’s odd to see Chris talk to other adults, Isaac hadn’t realized until now how little he had seen Chris interact with anyone except their small group in Chicago. 

Mr. Stilinski catches everyone’s attention when Melissa brings out the cookies (and loudly says “Isaac gets all the credit for these”). He lifts his glass of pomegranate juice and says, “I just want to say first, how grateful I am that you are all here. It’s really wonderful to meet new people who are important to our boys. I only wish it was snowing so you felt more at home.”

“I’m fine with it,” Allison chirps.

Mr. Stilinski smiles, “I know we spent a lot of time planning the traveling and lodging, but I thought we could talk a little about tomorrow: Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day?”

Scott looks around, “I thought we would just do the same things.”

“Well, Scott,” Mr. Stilinski says, “Our guests may have other traditions to incorporate. For example, do you three go to services on Christmas eve?” 

"Me and Dad do," Allison says, "We go to an Episcopal church in town. We don't go on a regular basis, just the big holidays. Isaac doesn't go with us though."

"I don't just sit in the car outside," Isaac adds, "That's when I go to my friend Erica's house and see which of her aunts is the first to mix me up with her boyfriend."

Mr. Stilinski nods. “Alright. Well there is an Episcopalian church not far from here I could direct you to. Stiles and I drive out of town usually to a Catholic church for an evening mass on Christmas Eve and get dinner on the road. However—”

“Dad, we’re not going to do that are we?” Stiles asks. “It takes forever and Isaac isn’t going to want to come.”

“I’d come with you,” Isaac says quietly. 

“Dude no,” Stiles says, “It’s literally in  _ Polish  _ and there’s this whole choreography that you have to know. Trust me. No.”

Mr. Stilinski clears his throat, “I was thinking this year we could try something new. So if Chris and Allison don’t mind, those who want to can join at the Episcopalian church.”

Melissa reaches for a cookie off the plate on the coffee table. “Well I hope no one minds if Scott and I don’t join. And Isaac, you can hang out with us if you want.”

Then everyone is staring at him. “Okay,” Isaac says, neither saying yes or no to either. “Sounds good.” 

“I know no one here believes in Santa,” Chris says, “but we make cookies after the service. I’ve heard that you don’t have big Christmas eve dinners, do you kids mind if we keep it simple?”

He and Allison shake their heads. Then just as quickly as it came the focus is off of him. Chris takes over, outlining the menu for the Christmas Day feast. It’s inconspicuously lacking white stuff which means Isaac can eat all of it. 

“If you don’t mind giving me access to your kitchen,” he says to Mr. Stilinski, “My kids and I can do all the cooking.”

“We’ll help,” Scott insists, “I don’t know how to do too much, but I take direction well.” 

“Oh really?” Melissa says, “Would have loved to see some of that when you were in high school.” 

She’s teasing him, like Chris does sometimes. 

“Well Argent Lahey's,” Mr. Stilinski says, “Are there any Christmas traditions that we haven’t talked about that you would like to do?” 

Chris looks directly at Isaac, and Isaac looks back at him and makes a “what?” face because he doesn’t know what Chris wants. Chris must somehow read that as a go-ahead because he goes ahead and says, “My kids sleep by the tree on Christmas Eve. It’s a tradition.” 

Isaac’s face definitely wasn’t saying “go ahead and say that.”

“We don’t have to—“ Isaac starts, but Scott talks over him.

“Oh my god, that’s so sweet,” he hugs Allison to his side, “I can just picture you as a little girl trying to catch Santa so you could interrogate him.” 

Allison kisses Scott on the cheek, then looks over at Isaac seeking permission. Isaac shrugs. Because what the fuck, right?

“It’s actually not something we started doing until Isaac came,” she says, “It’s a Lahey tradition.” 

And once again all eyes are on him. “We  _ don’t have to do it,”  _ he says. 

Stiles’s hand finds his. He links their fingers together and squeezes. “Are you kidding? A family tradition that involves a sleepover is all we have needed. Dude, everyone could sleepover at my dad’s place and we could have one massive sleepover in the living room. Right, Dad?”

“Right,” Mr. Stilinski confirms. Like a crazy person. 

“Seriously,” Isaac says, “It’s just something I did when I was a little kid, and we started doing it again but that doesn’t mean—“

“Isaac,” Chris gently interrupts, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” 

He loves sleeping by the tree on Christmas Eve. Even though he never really believed in Santa, sleeping below the tree with all the lights was the closest he got to understanding Christmas magic. He didn’t expect to do it this year but—

“If everyone else wants to…” he trails off.

Stiles whoops and leans over and kisses him. “Thank you,” he says, “for continually making my life better” 

* * *

Eventually, he texts Stiles that he wants to leave. He starts a text to Chris, but realizes that would be wrong, so he copy and pastes and sends the same text to Stiles. It takes a few minutes for Stiles to react, so Isaac hands him his phone. Stiles finishes explaining their neighborhood in Chicago to Melissa. He turns over his phone, hands it back to Isaac and says, “Okay, we’re pumpkins. We’re going to head back home. Don’t miss us too much.” 

In high school, he and Allison took personality quizzes on a boring afternoon at home. The main thing he remembers is that Allison’s personality type was dangerously altruistic, which didn’t make a ton of sense in high school but was very accurate now. And it said he was an introvert. He disagreed, because he was always with her or Chris or Erica. Allison said, “There’s a difference between not wanting to be alone and liking to be around people.” 

He was feeling that difference very acutely now. He let Stiles drive so he could not pay attention, and Stiles knew him well enough not to start a conversation. They’d come from town that morning, so he was observing for the first time the transition between Scott and Stiles’ neighborhood. 

None of Beacon Hills looked remotely like the rural town in South-Central Indiana that he grew up in. Those houses looked like his, or they were mobile homes, or they were the Hale property. All the houses in Beacon Hills were pretty nice. Nearly all of them were two stories with green yards, but he could tell that Stiles lived in a much nicer area, even though Melissa’s house and her yard was bigger. Newer houses, better cars in the driveway and better street lights. 

The houses in Stiles’ neighborhood were decorated differently too. Here, many of the houses had professionally adhered lights, and as they pulled into Stiles’ driveway he noticed that Mr. Stilinski’s house was an outlier, with no decorations. 

Stiles lets them in. Isaac goes upstairs, and Stiles is two steps behind him, then stops, so Isaac stops too. 

“Are you going to sleep, and if you’re not do you want to be alone?” 

He fucking loves Stiles for being this way. 

“I want to be alone for ninety minutes,” he decides. 

Stiles checks his phone. “Nice, cool. The weirdly aggro nine o’clock news is about to be on, so I’ll watch that, cry about not being able to watch it at home. If you don’t come downstairs I’ll assume you fell asleep.” 

Fucking. Loves. Stiles. 

Upstairs he debates whether he can smoke in a cop’s bathroom. He’s done it in Chris’ bathroom when he was out of town, but Chris always knew when he got home. A cop definitely would. 

He does the next best thing and listens to his radio show. He keeps the lights on, but without meaning to almost falls asleep. He wakes up to the sound of voices downstairs. Almost as soon as he hears them, he gets a text from Stiles. 

Stiles: it’s Scott and Allison. Parents are still at Melissa’s house. S and A are feeling milkshakes and I AGREE????

Isaac: like mcdonalds or is this a fancy beacon hills thing

Stiles: It’s a fancy BH thing, but I will not be sad if you don’t come. 

He’s gone back to not wanting to be alone, so he texts that he’ll come. He wants to spend more time with Allison, it helped to know that she thinks that Melissa and Mr. Stilinski are too nice as well. 

When he comes downstairs he sees that in the past two hours, Allison has put her hair up and is  _ drunk.  _ She’s leaning against Scott and claps when she sees him come downstairs. 

“Come on, please. Oh my god. Please come with us. Please come with us and get milkshakes.” 

She is excited on the entire drive, and it’s kind of funny for her to be the more inebriated one of them for once. 

“Our. parents. are. bonding. You guys. I don’t think any of us can ever break up. I think Dad has friends on the continent for the first time.” 

“Your dad has other friends,” Stiles says. 

“Not on this  _ continent.  _ They’re all in Europe, except Derek.” 

“Derek doesn’t count,” Isaac says. 

“That’s why we can’t break up with Stiles and Scott!” 

He and Stiles are in the front seat, Stiles is driving which frees him up to turn completely around so he can face Allison. “Did you get drunk with Chris?” 

“He, of course, did not get drunk, they’re friends but they could still murder us! But I did! Because he won’t get drunk, and you won’t get drunk, so we won’t get murdered.” 

Scott laughs but it sounds a little forced. “Allison, do you think my mom and Stiles’ dad are going to murder you guys?” 

“Of course not, it’s just our way to think we might get murdered.” 

Which is true. 

But Allison is going to be so embarrassed that she got silly drunk in front of Melissa and Mr. Stilinski. He hopes that Scott got her away before she started talking like this, and she just accelerated in the car. 

“Okay,” Stiles says, “any other shares on the mores of the Argent Lahey family, or are we ready to experience the most bomb milkshakes in Northern California?” 

They turn into a place with blinking pink neon lights reading “Malt Mania” in front of an A-Frame blue building with a tiny interior. Even though it’s December 23rd and at this point, almost 50 degrees, there is a line out the door. 

When they get in line, it becomes clear that this is a high school haunt they’re revisiting. Specifically, because except for them, everyone in line is a complete child. 

He stands behind Stiles and folds his arms around Stiles’ shoulders. “Do these kids not have parents?” 

Stiles looks around. “Oh. Yeah. That’s kind of the Beacon Hills way. We basically operated like, independently from our parents once we got cars, or a friend with a car. Dad used to call Melissa to verify that someone had laid eyes on me and I was alive.” 

Allison laughs loudly. “Oh man, our dad would have combusted if we did that.” 

“Well, Beacon Hills is really safe. Safer than Chicago,” Scott said, “if I had a kid in Chicago, I wouldn’t let the same things our parents did. I almost got mugged my first week there!”

Stiles says, “Well, Scottie, you did get shot here. That did happen.” 

Scott shrugs. “Total outlier. Anyway, we have to decide what to order.” 

He and Allison make eye contact from where she’s leaning against Scott. He feels sure they’re noticing the same thing. Scott and Stiles mention the shooting with a kind of light handed energy that none of them ever managed. Stiles even makes jokes about the two times he had psychotic episodes severe enough to be hospitalized. He wears socks he got from his more recent hospitalization. 

He and Allison don’t operate that way. 

Maybe if they did it would be better, and they could say things like, “Hey, do you think coming out here will upset the careful set of rituals we’ve established so we don’t feel sad about everyone who we wish wasn’t dead?” 

The line moves quickly and soon they’re inside, minutes away from having to order. Stiles reaches up and holds onto Isaac’s folded arms. “Okay, so we’ve got our concretes. We’ve got our malts. We’ve got our mix-ins. We’ve got our ice cream if you want to wimp out. 

Scott jolts. “Wait, isn’t Isaac lactose intolerant?” 

Allison lolls her head against Scott. “Oh wow. You’re pathologically nice. Stiles and I are the ones who should have remembered that.” 

That’s true, he’s not even worried about not having dairy with everything going on, but a milkshake would be extremely stupid. 

“I wasn’t planning on having anything,” he says. 

“Gelato?” Scott asks, “can you have gelato?” 

“Sorbet,” Allison corrects. 

Scott examines the menu. “Oh. No sorbet.” 

“I don’t want anything,” Isaac says, “I just came because I wanted to be around a ton of children.” 

“Congrats,” Stiles says, “we’ll--oh you can have a brownie! You can get a brownie.” 

Isaac orders a brownie he plans on putting in Mr. Stilinski’s fridge, and Allison orders a giant cheesecake flavored milkshake that she decides she and Scott will share, but when they go back to the car to consume their sugar, she makes no move to share. 

“Hey, since we’re regressing, let’s just go full high school and turn the heat on and eat here.” 

“Fine with me,” Allison says, “I would like to be less of a blammo case when we get back to Melissa’s.” 

“Hey,” Scott says, “um. I know you two are really not very--has this been okay for you?” 

“Oh yeah,” Allison says quickly.

“ Are you sure?” Scott asks. 

“Yeah,” Allison says, “I mean. Yeah. You know. It’s just. We have our stuff! And you have your stuff. But we’re used to change. All of us had a parent, then didn’t have a parent. So we’re used to changes! We’re fine.” 

No one has to make eye contact for everyone to know that Allison is not fine. 

“Hey Allison,” Scott says, “I know that we’re--that you’re meeting my mom and it might feel like you have to be really on, but my mom will understand if you’re sad. You too, Isaac.” 

“I’m holding a milkshake,” Allison says, “I can’t possibly be sad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was wrong about this being 12 chapters, but that just means more Argent Lahey McCall Stilinski shenanigans.


	11. Chapter 11

Isaac wakes up to texts from his former boss at the grocery store— which he quit years ago—asking him if he can come in for an evening shift. He texts back that he’s in  _ California  _ and his former boss asks if he can fly back. 

His phone tells him that it’s Christmas Eve. And it’s 8:32, Pacific time. He overslept.

He feels off. He wants to go back to sleep or go for a run or break out his stash or something besides lie in bed. He’s nervous about it being Christmas Eve and doing something wrong that ruins everything. 

Stiles stirs next to him. 

Isaac reaches out and pokes Stiles in the face. Sometimes he just touches Stiles because he’s allowed to and the novelty of it is amazing. Other times he has a point. Like waking Stiles up. 

Stiles’ face scrunches up. He stretches and yawns. Blindly, he gropes for Isaac’s phone and he hands it over. Stiles looks at the clock and groans. 

“Oh my god, Cowboy, it’s so early. Why are we awake?”

“It’s 10:32 our time. We’re always awake by now.”

Stiles groans. “We’ve been here for  _ days.  _ We’ve adjusted to the local time.”

“You’ve adjusted. Chris probably woke up at four.”

“He always wakes up a four.”

“Then he woke up at two.” 

Begrudgingly, Stiles sits up and gets out of bed. He’s still wearing a hoodie he found in his closet, a worn our camo patterned hoodie with the neck cut. It’s probably from high school. Isaac probably shouldn’t find it hot as hell. 

“Have you ever had sex on this bed?” Isaac asks. 

Stiles  _ blushes _ . “Um, do you really want to know the answer to that question?”

Maybe not. “Well now I know, don’t I? Who was it? Malia?”

“Yeah of course Malia,” Stiles says, “You’re the first person I’ve brought home. Yes Malia, when I was in  _ high school.  _ The sheets have been washed a thousand times since then.”

“I’m not jealous,” Isaac lies. 

“Oh, believe me, I know you aren’t. So not your style.” Stiles yawns. “Alright, Argent Lahey, get up. You’re the one who  _ poked me in the face _ , so you need to get up. It’s bullshit that I’m standing up and you aren’t.”

Isaac ambles up and pulls Stiles in close. He kisses him and makes sure that he’s good, that he’s better than Malia and worth taking home to meet his life. Stiles pulls him close and grabs the hem of his shirt. Stiles runs his hands of Isaac’s back. Eventually, they stumble down onto the bed, fumbling blindly, but when Stiles starts maneuvering Isaac to lie down, Isaac stops him.

“I’m not doing anything with our dads in the house,” Isaac says.

Stiles pouts. “Come on. You’ve never done  _ anything  _ with your dad around?”

Isaac feels his face heat. “Not with two of them.” He smacks Stiles in the arm. “Come on. Let’s go get breakfast.”

It’s good they got dressed before coming down because they find Chris and Mr. Stilinski and Melissa and Scott and Allison all in the small kitchen drinking coffee. Chris is at the table reading the news on his phone, and Melissa is across from him, talking happily to Scott and Allison who are fully dressed, standing by the fridge with mugs of coffee. Isaac blinks. 

“Were we all getting together?” Stiles asks. 

Mr. Stilinski smiles and holds out a pot of coffee and points to some mugs on the counter. “We just enjoy each other’s company. Is that alright with you?”

“It’s three in the morning!” Stiles exclaims. 

“Almost eleven your time,” Mr. Stilinski corrects him. “If you two had slept any longer we would have woken you up.”

Stiles yawns and waves his hands. “No thanks,” he says. He grabs the pot of coffee and pours himself a mug. He puts in on the coffee maker and finds a tea kettle under a cabinet, fills it with water and puts in on the stove. For Isaac. Even though Stiles has made him tea before, it still fills Isaac with affection to see him do it. 

Isaac glances at Chris and finds that he is watching Stiles approvingly. Chris puts his phone down and sits up straighter if that was possible. “We had discussed going out to breakfast,” he says, “Is that something you two would be up for?”

Stiles breaks out into a grin. “At O’Dell’s?” he asks, “Oh heck yes. Isaac, have you ever eaten a breakfast skillet?” 

He hasn’t, but it sounds disgustingly gluttonous. “O’Dell’s sounds good,” Isaac hedges.

Stiles jumps and claps. “Let’s go now!”

It takes some time to get out of the house, between Allison and Scott drinking their coffee slower than anyone ever has before, and he and Stiles needing to shower. By the time to get to O’Dell’s there is a line out the door. Looking through the window, Isaac can see it’s a classic diner with only four-person booths and seats at the counter. He begins to panic, trying to figure out who is going to sit in what booth, and what if no one wants to sit with him? What if Stiles wants to sit with Scott and he’s alone with Stiles’ dad?

Stiles seems to sense that he’s freaking out, because he quietly takes Isaac’s hand and squeezes it. He leans over and whispers, “You good?”

“I’m not six years old.”

“Agreed. You good?”

Isaac shakes his head. Just then a server in a classic pink diner dress with an apron yells, “Sheriff is that you? You need two booths?”

Mr. Stilinski yells, “Yes!” and hurries forward. They follow him and the sever to two empty booths. Without talking about it, Melissa, Scott and Allison sit at one booth. Chris slides into the other booth and Mr. Stilinski slides in across from him. Stiles sits next to his dad and without having to think about it—thank god—Isaac sits next to his. 

The booth is a tight fit but he can get out immediately if he needs to. So that’s one worry done. 

He opens the menu and encounters a whole other issue. 

There’s probably no dye in the breakfast foods on the menu, but they don’t list a whole wheat option for toast and the pancakes are no doubt made with bleached flour. That eliminates pancakes, toast, waffles and French toast. Hash browns are white and bacon has white spots and bagels are obviously out. He can eat scrambled eggs, but they may not scramble them enough and there might be white bits and then Isaac can’t eat them. 

White stuff is the stupidest rule his brain has ever made up. Formal rules about dye, starch and sugar at least had a basis in nutritional health. White stuff is completely arbitrary and makes no fucking sense, but his brain loves to spontaneously decide that if he eats something white he will get sick and he will get in trouble and he can’t do that right now. 

The last white thing he ate was the cheese on Casey’s pizza, which was awesome, then his brain announced that was enough of that and the flirtation with the rule his mind was playing around with came slamming in with totality. If he eats anything white there will be a complete disaster. 

Stiles doesn’t know about his food rules. He knows that Isaac eats healthy and doesn’t like carbs but he doesn’t know how stupid Isaac’s brain is. Isaac doesn’t want him to find out now. He stares at the menu, feeling his heartbeat fast as he tries to figure out what the fuck he can eat. 

Stiles and his dad are having an animated argument over whether or not his dad is allowed to eat bacon, and while they are distracted Chris leans over. He reaches into Isaac’s menu and points at a veggie omelet, which is pictured to be totally yellow and speckled with broccoli and bell pepper. Relieved, Isaac nods and Chris points to the side of sausage option and Isaac shakes his head. 

Meat. Meat is off the menu too. 

“Bacon is the  _ worst thing you can eat,  _ you bozo. You have heart problems, you are not allowed to eat bacon.”

“Stiles, I have never once been told I have heart problems. You are making that up. If I want the bacon, I will have the bacon. Which incidentally, I do not.” Mr. Stilinski shakes his head. “Isaac, do you allow your father to eat bacon?”

Isaac freezes. They’re not asking him about his food habits, they’re asking him about Chris’. “I don’t try to stop him from doing anything,” Isaac says. 

“Ha!” Mr. Stilinski crows. “See? This is a good son.”

“Stiles is a good son,” Isaac says automatically. Even though that’s not his to decide. And he’s going against Mr. Stilinski for the first time. But Stiles calls his dad every day and talks to him for a long time and loves him so he is a good son. 

“Oh of course,” Mr. Stilinski says, “He’s just a pain in the ass sometimes. Like when he tries to stop me from eating some bacon when I am a grown man who has a right to some damn bacon.” 

Isaac is pretty sure that Mr. Stilinski is pretending to be upset but he’s not sure and his stupid brain is reacting like he has to get Stiles out of here and let his dad kill Mr. Stilinski before something bad happens because his brain is  _ stupid.  _

“Noah,” Chris says, “You’re not actually angry, are you?”

Mr. Stilinski blinks. He looks around the table then shakes his head. “No,” he says, “No, I don’t even want bacon. Trust me. I’m just kidding around.”

Chris nods. “We don’t kid around about being angry, in our family.”

Mr. Stilinski looks right at Isaac and a knowing look passes over his face. Isaac is horrified and pissed off. But he can’t storm off. He’s better than that now. 

He’s so much better than this. He knows that, at the very least, Stiles is an adult. Isaac doesn’t have to protect him. He encounters parents all the time. He sees parents at the ice rink, and even when Mila Myer’s mom says, “I swear to god, kid,” and doesn’t finish the sentence, he doesn’t assume Mila is about to die. Mostly. 

Chris Argent isn’t the only one whose kids aren’t terrified of them. He can handle that, except for today. 

Today he glares at Chris. 

Chris gives him an even look in return. 

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Stilinski says, “I don’t—“

The same server comes to their booth. “So friends,” she says, “What are we having?”

Mr. Stilinski clears his throat. “I will have chocolate chip pancakes with sausage on the side, and coffee.”

Stiles nods approvingly even though that is a disgustingly unhealthy order. “I’ll have the Santa Fe skillet and a side of chocolate chip pancakes, and coffee” Stiles says, taking his dad’s menu and handing it along with his to the server. 

Chris looks to Isaac but Isaac isn’t sure if he can order the veggie omelet so he’s clutching the menu like an idiot. 

“Do you have whole wheat toast?” Chris asks.

“Oh yeah,” the server says, “We just don’t say in the menu, but we got it.”

Chris nods. “I will have a Denver omelet with wheat toast, and coffee.” He hands this menu to Isaac. 

If the omelet comes and it has white bits he will just eat the toast and say he wasn’t hungry. 

It’ll be fine. 

“Veggie omelet and wheat toast,” Isaac says, handing her the menus. All confident, like he didn’t have a mini crisis about what to order. 

Breakfast is exhausting. Isaac just wants to go back to Stiles’ ridiculous purple room and lie down. He wants to be alone, or better yet, alone with Stiles. But that doesn’t happen. Everyone leaves the diner together and agrees to go back to the Stilinski house for no clear reason.

In the car on the way over Isaac is quiet. Stiles notices. 

“You good, B?” he asks. 

“I’m good, C,” Isaac says. 

“Are you sure?” Stiles asks. “You barely spoke at breakfast.”

“I just…this is a lot isn’t it?” Isaac says. “Do you always do this much for Christmas?”

Stiles drums his fingers on the car wheel. “Well. Yeah. I mean. We just went out to breakfast. Was that too much?”

No. It wasn’t too much. He’s better than this. He can handle going out to breakfast with his boyfriend and his dad. His stupid brain just needs to catch up.

Except it doesn’t. 

When they get to the house, Chris is waiting by his rental, and without a word he leads Isaac away down the driveway and away from the cul de sac. He follows without objection, and he doesn’t hear if Stiles makes a joke because he probably doesn’t. 

Chris stops at the end of the block and puts his hand on his shoulder. 

“I haven’t done anything,” Isaac says immediately. Chris takes a deep breath. “I’m fine.” 

“Have you had any time alone?” Chris asks, “You need time alone.” 

“I did last night.” 

“Have you,” Chris gestures vaguely, “done other things that calm you down?” 

“Have I  _ smoked pot _ ?” 

“Have you made bread, or listened to your radio show, or gone on a run?” 

“Chris. I’m completely fine.” 

Chris seems extremely distressed by this. He doesn’t even try to say anything, he just raises his hand to rest on Isaac’s face for a moment, then brings it back to his shoulder. “I’m not going to have a meltdown. Okay? You’re right, it’s a lot of people, but I’m just tired.”

“This happens, sometimes during Christmas. To both of you. Christmas can be a difficult time for anyone, but both of you--”

“That was years ago. Can we go back to the house? I’ll text you if I need to do this again, but I really just want to get back inside. I will admit that I’m worried that everyone hates me, and being forced to act weird doesn’t help.” 

Chris nods and they start walking back. “If they think you taking a minute to talk to your father is weird, then they need to readjust. If you need to act weird to get what you need, then you should.”

He stops in front of the steps. Chris gets almost to the door, then stops and looks back down the steps to him. 

“Have you done any of those things?” Isaac asks, “Have you like, emailed your friends or gone on a run or shot something?” 

Chris looks genuinely amused. “Yes, I have.” 

“What did you shoot?” 

Chris laughs and goes inside. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This contains a brief scene of 2 characters smoking marijuana. If you're familiar with this verse it should come as no surprise.

They go back to the house where everyone is sitting around the tree talking. For a while, he feels better, maybe out of indignation and to prove Chris wrong. But it doesn’t last. The entire time Isaac’s head is buzzing and he’s overly aware of the way his shirt feels on his skin and he can’t let go of Stiles’ hand for anything in the world. Chris is out back with Mr. Stilinski, and Melissa is reading a Salon article out loud with voices. It’s when Stiles gets up and lets go to get a drink from the kitchen that Isaac snaps. 

“I’m going on a run,” Isaac announces.

Stiles turns around. “Now?” He asks. 

“Now,” Isaac confirms, thinking of the stash he has in his running shoes. That is in a county sheriff’s house. Because he’s an addicted idiot. 

Scott jumps up. “I’ll come with you!” he says. 

Fuck.

“No, you don’t have to. I won’t get lost,” Isaac says. 

“No totally, I know you won’t get lost,” Scott says, “But this way I can take you through the woods, and we’ll totally have fun! I’ve been meaning to go on a run since we got here and you and I have never gone on a run together so we’ll have a great time.”

Everyone is staring at him. Isaac can’t really say that he wants to be alone, not when Scott is being so nice to him. Scott is so nice that sometimes Isaac didn’t get where he came from. Meeting Melissa provided a lot of perspective in that regard. She is crazy nice too. She even grins and says, “That sounds like a great idea! I’m sure Isaac would love some company.”

Isaac would not love some company. Isaac would love to be alone and find a spot in the woods to smoke up in privacy so he can get his head one straight. 

“Sure,” he says. “Sounds good.”

Scott borrows Stiles’ actual high school gym uniform and a pair of sneakers because they have the same size shoe. Isaac goes up to Stiles’ room to change into his running clothes and as he’s pulling his sneakers out of his suitcase, Scott knocks and Isaac is stupid so he says, “Yeah?” and Scott walks in.

Isaac is frozen with his sneakers in hand and his stash in the toe of his left shoe. He waits for Scott to say what he wants to say, but Scott just sits down at Stiles’ desk and says “Ready when you are dude.”

Isaac has the choice of canceling the whole thing, pulling a bag of weed out of his shoe in front of a future lawyer, or putting on his shoes like nothing is happening. 

He chooses to put on his shoes. Because he’s stupid.

“I’m going to take on this back path that goes between Stiles’ house and my moms’ house,” Scott says. “It’s through the woods most of the way, and we’ll end up back at my car so we can drive here instead of running back. 

Isaac nods and with a goodbye that lasts far too long, they’re on the path. Isaac never did cross country, the closest thing to the woods were the lagoons, but even then he runs on a marked trail. Scott runs like he knows the terrain under his feet perfectly, but Isaac spends half is energy dodging sticks and potholes in the forest floor. The other half of his energy he spends ignoring the way his toe jams into the obstruction in his shoe. Scott runs ahead of him, periodically looking back and slowing down to let Isaac catch up. Isaac feels anger pool in his stomach at Scott for coming along and sabotaging his high and making him run this ridiculous course. 

Then it comes to a head. A branch on the ground comes out of nowhere and Isaac bites it hard. He tumbles to the ground, throwing his hands out to catch himself. 

“Fuck!” he yells. 

Scott stops and runs back. He puts his hands on Isaac’s back to pull him up, but Isaac spastically reaches back to push him off and sits up on his own. Exhausted and feeling like a baby, Isaac stays on the ground to examine his palms. Which are bleeding. Fuck. His left toe is throbbing and his hands hurt and he just wants to go home to Chicago. 

“I’m so sorry dude,” Scott says, “I should have yelled back at you about that branch. Here, let’s go home.” 

“Yeah, you should have,” Isaac grumbles, willing himself not to be a monster. “I just--the point of this was to be alone.”

Scott blinks owlishly at him. “Oh. Man. You could have told me that. I so didn’t have to come.”

Isaac takes off his left shoe. His foot fucking hurts and he’s not running back with this shit in his shoe. Fuck it. It’s not like Scott is his D.A.R.E. officer. He takes the worn plastic bag with weed and papers out of his shoe. The papers are probably ruined now. 

“Oh,” Scott says, “That must have messed up your stride.” Scott kneels next to him. 

“That’s all you’re going to say?” Isaac asks. 

Scott smiles. “Dude. I know you smoke. You’ve been high like, half the times I’ve seen you back home. I’m just surprised you haven’t been high on this trip. It has to have been stressful for you.”

Is he that obvious? “I wanted to just come out here and takes a few hits,” Isaac confesses. “This has been really overwhelming..”

Scott frowns. “Yeah?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Isaac confirms. “I—Chris loves Christmas and we always have a good time at home. But I don’t know if Mr. Stilinski likes me, and I miss Chris’ apartment and I am acting like a scared kid and Chris had to intervene like I’m some traumatized toddler, and I’ve just been waiting for something bad to happen.” 

Why is he saying all this? To Scott who he barely knows? 

“That sucks, Isaac,” Scott says, “If you’ve been waiting for something bad to happen, I totally get why you would want to use your coping mechanisms for it.” Scott sits back. “Go ahead. Seriously.”

“I can’t smoke.”

“I’ll close my eyes,” Scott jokes. 

“No I literally can’t smoke, I don’t have a lighter.”

Scott’s eyes turn mournful. “Oh. I’d say I’d build a fire, but, California. My mom’s house is just a quarter-mile away, think you can make it? We have a candle lighter there that we can use.”

“We?” Isaac asks. 

“If you don’t mind sharing,” Scott says. “I haven’t done it since college, but. I don’t know. Tis the season.”

“You don’t have to smoke with me,” Isaac emphasizes.

“I know,” Scott says, “This has just been kind of overwhelming for me too.”

Well shit. 

They walk the rest of the way to the residential streets that lead to Scott’s mom’s house. In the house Scott lets Isaac wait while he finds a giant red candle lighter, and he motions to Isaac to follow him into the garage. 

The garage is totally full of crap, old furniture and boxes labeled “Scott” and “Raf”. For a minute Isaac feels like he’s going to have to bolt, but Scott turns on a light and clears a space and pulls down two folding chairs off the wall. 

“Okay,” he says, “Ready?”

Isaac sits down and pulls a paper out of his bag, along with a clump. He rolls the joint quickly and he is pleased when he notes from Scott’s face that he is impressed. He loves smoking with new people and showing off one of the only skills he has. He brings the joint to his mouth and uses the ridiculous lighter to light it. The first drag he takes is incredible. Even though he knows he can’t be feeling it yet, he feels relief wash through him from the tips of his fingers to his still throbbing toe. 

Scott holds his hand out politely, and Isaac hands it over. They smoke in silence for a while, until Scott coughs and breaks the silence. 

“So, you smoke a lot?”

“Not all the time.”

“But pretty often when I’ve seen you,” Scott points out.

“Basically that’s when we’re at a party, or with Allison’s work friends or something,” Isaac points right back. “Those situations stress me out. I sometimes go a week without smoking.”

Sometimes. 

Not in a while. 

“When did you start smoking?” Scott asks. 

Isaac shrugs. Erica and his dad and everyone thinks he started when he moved to Chicago. He hasn’t told them about the house parties. “It wasn’t regular until I moved in with Erica, after high school,” he says, “It’s not a big deal. It’s just expensive to keep up with. Erica gets it supplied for her epilepsy, but with me smoking it too, we have to buy as well.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m talking about this with you. On Christmas.”

“Dude, I like hearing about your life. It's not like smoking is a crime. Well, it is. But not really. We’re like, brothers in law, basically. It’s awesome. I love that you’re with Stiles. I love—“ Scott pauses and lifts the joint for emphasis “—I love you and I love Stiles. I love you both.”

“You don’t love me,” Isaac says, reaching for the joint.

“Sure I do!” Scott says. 

“You’re just high.”

Scott squints at him. “You’re really crabby. You’re always a little crabby, but you’re like,  _ really crabby right now.”  _

Suddenly the folding chair feels awful and uncomfortable. He can’t lie on grounds like this, so he takes off his jacket and tries to use it as a pillow without moving much. 

“Ohhhhh,” Scott says, “you’re crabby because you’re uncomfortable. Allison said you get uncomfortable really easily. Here, let’s go inside. Yes, let’s do it.” 

He can’t help but start laughing at the way Allison described him to Scott, like he’s a tempermental exotic bird. He laughs all the way to the couch in the living room which he lies down on. Scott bats at his legs, so he folds up to let Scott sit at the other end. Without asking, Scott starts patting his socked feet. 

After either two minutes or three hours, the door opens. Even high he can tell that it’s Stiles. He knows what his footsteps sound like, and even if he didn’t he knows what Stiles sounds like when he says, “Hellooooo?” 

“Who goes there?” Scott calls out. 

Stiles ambles down the steps to the living room grinning. “Just me. I came here to get Melissa’s story quilt, since we’re doing that there tonight. What’s up, buttercups?” 

Out of his peripheral vision he sees Scott do a series of gestures, and very quickly that after he’s gone and Stiles is squatting in front of his face. 

“Can I sit where Scott was sitting and touch your feet?” 

Isaac closes his eyes and nods. “Scott didn’t ask.” 

Stiles lifts his feet and pulls them over his lap and starts gently rubbing. “Scott and I aren’t the same person, though he’d be  _ so lucky _ if we were. Are you ready to stop pretending you’re ok?” 

He hasn’t smoked in two minutes or three hours, now he’s just worn out. There was a stretch of time, before his dad died, that he was convinced that he didn’t have emotions. Maybe he had brain damage, or he was born without them, but by his memory, he didn’t feel happy, or angry or sad. He only felt scared. 

Then for a while, he was only emotion. He could have lit an entire city with anger that sometimes made it hard to even see. He isn’t sure how he even developed relationships with Allison and Chris when he operated like the entire world was trying to kill him. 

He spends his entire adult life failing to find a middle ground. Sometimes he gets arrested for driving 50 miles over the speed limit for the third time in a week. Sometimes he is stoned for four days straight and can’t name a single emotion for a million dollars. 

He knows it isn’t okay. 

“I’m really tired,” he says. “Like, all the time. I thought it was because I worked nights, but now I don’t. Before that I thought it was because I lived with my dad. But I think I’ll just always be tired.” 

Stiles drums his fingers on his foot. “You seemed okay until we left Salt Lake. You were excited to come, but I’m just getting more worried about you. Is it because of my dad? Are you having flashbacks or something?” 

He absolutely is not having flashbacks. He’s had those, he knows those and how to avoid them. “Can I have some aspect of my life that is not about Creek Lahey? Can’t I just be tired of being around people and need to smoke?” 

“Yeah, totally. But we’re worried about you.” 

When he’s not exhausted he’ll be upset that this obviously has become a topic of discussion. 

He tries to sit up without Stiles letting go of his feet, which is made easier when Stiles scoots closer without letting go. “When I was twenty I had a meltdown on Christmas Eve. We don’t know why. I just cried for like a week. Allison and Chris tried really hard to figure out why, but it just happened. Things like that happen sometimes. It’s fucking embarrassing but it happens.” 

“Okay well, you haven’t cried. It also would be fine if you did, do you know how much my dad cries? He cries so much. I don’t know how he doesn’t have a thousand suitors.” 

“I’m tired.” 

“Me too,” Stiles says. “Why don’t you take a nap. I’ll stay here and explore my newfound foot fetish.” 


	13. Chapter 13

Stiles isn’t exploring his foot fetish when Isaac wakes up, but he is still sitting at the other end of the couch. It’s still light outside, which is somewhat surprising because he wasn’t sure what time it was when Stiles came over. 

He tries to take inventory before Stiles notices he’s awake. The pillow he doesn’t remember putting under his head is suede and soft, and the dry heat whirrs through the house. He doesn’t hear anyone else, but Scott is probably still there. His sweaty running clothes have dried to his body. 

At least he feels better now. His edges are smoothed out and he’s able to take deep breaths for the first time all day. 

He could stay quiet longer if he knew what time it was, but without knowing what’s going on the calm isn’t going to last long, so he kicks Stiles. 

“Oh hey, my boyfriend’s awake,” Stiles sings. He was looking at Melissa’s coffee table book. “If you slept any longer I would have gone down to one of our three gay clubs.” 

“How long did I sleep?” 

Stiles reaches for his phone and takes a long time to look at it. “Should I just like, preroll a speech on why sleep is necessary.” 

“No.” 

“It’s two thirty.” Isaac groans. “So you slept for--”

“I know, I know.” He sits up. “Did you just sit here the whole time? Weren’t you bored.” 

Stiles shrugs and puts the book back on the table. They don’t say “I love you” very often. They don’t have to. 

“Your dad is waiting for you or me to tell him that he can come over. He totally trusts me, dude, it’s awesome. I told him that you were taking a nap which, duh, he knows you, so he wanted to come over but I was like, ‘No, Chris, we’ll text you when he’s awake.’ I’m basically your husband now. Isn’t that amazing?” 

It actually is, Chris would be here if he thought he needed to be. “You said everyone is worried. I haven’t been acting that weird.” 

“Yeah, they just know your bell curve. You talk a lot when you’re super activated, a little less than other people when you’re fine, and not at all when you’re imploding.” 

“That’s not a bell curve. But that’s true. Melissa and your dad don’t know me.” 

“Yeah, a person ceasing to speak is a universal red flag. But it’s not like they’re waiting to take you to Eichen Hospital. You’re overwhelmed. Christmas makes a lot of people sad. You haven’t gotten to wear your weed socks. You know, I don’t know if you processed this, but my dad had to go to the backyard for like an hour before you left, to take a break. We’re all just people.” 

He reaches for Stiles’ hand, and receives it readily. “I’m sorry. You came here to be with your dad.” 

“I think he can handle not laying eyes on me for a few hours. Do you want to hang out here more, or do you want to come with me to see what’s in Melissa’s kitchen?”

While Stiles takes inventory of Melissa’s refrigerator, he sums up what everyone else is up to. Scott drove back to Mr. Stilinski’s house, and is now at a sporting good store with Mr. Stilinski and Allison getting sleeping bags or something. Melissa and Chris are still at the house. 

That means Melissa and Chris are in a house that isn’t theirs, but he and Stiles are too. They aren’t even staying here, but their alone in Melissa’s blue house and Stiles is rifling through the fridge with a lot of confidence for someone who has never lived there.

“Will Melissa care that you’re messing with all that?”

Stiles’ head pops over the fridge door. “That I’m moving her old bag of carrots behind her even older bag of carrots? No. She won’t. She has a lot of frozen meals and if I remember correctly she gets very  _ attached  _ to which ones she eats in what order, but everything else is fair game.” 

Some part of his brain screams that there is not a single thing he can eat, but Stiles’ voice overrides it. “Oh my god, do you want mac and cheese? No, you obviously don’t. Wait!” He holds up a bottle of swilled peanut butter and jelly. “Will you join me in a flashback. The fun kind.” 

He starts laughing. “Melissa has that? I always wanted that.” 

“Melissa is amazing.” 

Stiles makes the sandwiches and helps himself to a beer and a diet coke for him. He knows where everything is, even though he can’t have spent much time here in years, and didn’t even come back to the kitchen yesterday. 

“Did you come here when you lived in Beacon Hills?” Stiles made them each two sandwiches, which was an excellent choice. “I mean, when Scott was in college and you were here.”

“When I was  _ crazy. _ Yeah. I stayed here for a few days before I went to the hospital because Dad didn’t want to leave me alone. I have a key, actually. I have since middle school. Scott has one to my dad’s house. There was this period of time where I lost my key for whatever reason neither of us got a new one, so I just lived here.”

Melissa and Noah seem like friends, but he can’t imagine any parent he knows being open to that kind of arrangement. “Are Melissa and your dad….?” 

Stiles makes a mock gagging noise. “Oh my god. No. Not at all.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Um, short of not walking in on them having sex, I’m as sure as I can be. Though I have done that, in that I never have. Ugh. No. My mom and Melissa weren’t even friends, that’s how different they were. Totally no.” 

He’s on the second sandwich, and he hasn’t even double-checked the wheat bread Stiles found to make sure none of it is white. “How were they different?” 

Stiles waves his hand vaguely. “Melissa is like, she’d leave clothes in the dryer for a week and just fish what she wants out of it. Not that that’s bad, but she’s a minute to minute type of person. Before my mom got sick, she was like...I don’t know I was eight when she died. But she was different. 

“My mom was the really Polish one? Like they’re both--Stiliniski--full on Polish, but my mom was first gen. My dad said that he thinks they only started dating in high school because of his last name. By the time she figured out he was very American, he’d charmed her. She was the one who spoke it, and is the reason we go to that church. She spoke it at home, I think she wanted me to be able to but Dad doesn’t really, and then I just didn’t. It’s not like it’s a language at Beacon Hills High School, or Grinnell. I feel kind of guilty, even though there’s not a way I could have learned it. But I like to think she likes that I travel and have lived in Sweden and stuff. But I can’t really know for sure.” 

“Melissa isn’t Polish,” he says. 

Stiles looks at him and fights back a smile but it bursts out in a laugh. “Nope, she’s not Polish.” 

“You know what I mean! But it’s cool that you have her. I didn’t know your families were this connected. Like, it’s really nice. Allison didn’t even have anything like this, a second person you can go to for other stuff your dad can’t do.”

Stiles gets up and goes to the counter where he reveals that he made two  _ additional  _ peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which was also very smart. Isaac takes a sandwich off the paper towel Stiles walks over with before he sits down. 

“There’s no evidence that nuclear families are the best things for children, you know. Like, it’s a very western idea. I think everyone should do this. And you know what, now your family is part of this karass. Which is great, because we’ve gone this long without anyone who knows how to cook a single thing.”

“Oh is that what this is about?” he jokes, “You and Scott just came to Chicago because there was no one who could cook in California?” 

“Totally,” Stiles agrees, “It took Scott over half a decade to find someone who knew how to boil water in Chicago, and once he found out Allison had you, then  _ I  _ came out to romance you.” Stiles seems to run out of steam. “I wish you could meet my mom.” 

“Did she know how to boil water?” 

“She did, so much. So much nalesniki, bitch.” 

“You don’t need to boil water to make nalesniki. It’s basically crepes.” 

Stiles grins. “You know how to make it? Oh man, you are totally making me nalesniki when we get home.” 

“You know that cooking is just buying the right stuff and reading? It’s not some genetic gift, if it was I wouldn’t know how to make anything but Jell-O.” 

“So your mom knew how to boil water too?” 

His instinct is to say no, the safe bet when talking about the Laheys is to assume that they had no life skills. It was better than being willfully negligent, it wasn’t on purpose. But his mom did know how to boil water. 

“She used to make Jell-O. Every day, I think, at some points. That’s what we put out for Santa, because they knew how to make fuck all else. We had stacks of Jell-O boxes in the cabinets, and none of us threw them out after she died. I think,” he thinks for a second because this is too bizarre to say out loud if it isn’t true, “I think it was the only thing she ate before she died. I remember Camden making it for her.” 

Stiles cuts the last sandwich and hands him half, and takes the other half for himself. “Like you?” 

“What? I’ve never eaten Jell-O in front of you. I haven’t eaten in in years.” 

Stiles starts to say something but then stops. “Christmas sucks without my mom, sometimes. That’s why we go to St. Hyacinth Basilica and drink peppermint milk. Do you want to make Jell-O? I am positive that Melissa has some, we can make some when we all get back from church.”

The other safe bet when talking about the Laheys is to make fun of them, so first he says, “That’s a total white trash move,” and then he says, “but yeah, I guess it would balance out whatever insane recipe Allison chose for the cookies.” 

The six sandwiches Stiles made are now no sandwiches. He feels the calmest he has since they arrived, even calmer than when he was high. He shouldn’t feel better because he knows now that Stiles is sad too, but he does. Maybe he just doesn’t feel pressure to act okay. He’s still fighting the ancient, Indiana belief that everyone is happy except for him.

For the first time since waking up, he checks his phone and sees texts from Chris and Allison. He asks Stiles, then texts Chris to come over. "My dad said they got enough sleeping bags for everyone without 'back issues' to sleep in the living room. He's going to come over to make sure I'm alive, then I guess we'll prep dinner so it's ready when you guys get back from church."

"Ask him if we should do dinner here," Stiles requests, "you and the McCalls will probably be here while we're getting our Gospel on anyway."

Isaac nods and sends off the text. "Stiles?"

"Yeah yeah?" 

“I wish I could have met your mom.” 

Stiles reaches over and pokes him in the forehead. “Me too, Cowboy. I wish I met yours too.” 


	14. Chapter 14

Chris does the thing where he looks at Isaac like he’s trying to assess if he has all his organs, then says there are groceries in his rental and would they please take them inside. 

The night before they agreed to keep tonight’s dinner simple, so the McCalls are going to order dinner while everyone is at church, but Chris brought veggie straws and pita chips and cheeses. 

He prepares to have another serious conversation, and possibly talk about his parents  _ again  _ but Chris found out that Burn Notice still airs here, so they watch an episode of that while Stiles goes to his dads’ to get ready for church. Chris is already dressed for it, in one of the few formal button-up shirts he wears and nice pants. He looks like he’s in a costume. Chris may wear the nicest possible jeans and t-shirts but they’re still jeans and t-shirts. 

“How’s Allison?” he asks on a commercial. 

“She’s struggling a bit with the change in routine,” Chris answers, "she told me I could tell you. But I think going to the service tonight will be helpful. I’ve looked online, it doesn’t look similar to St. Elisabeth's, but I think it will be similar enough.” 

“If I just find something like the Reyes party we’ll basically be home.” 

“I don’t think that’s likely. Though I am happy that the chances of me having to find parking among police cars when I pick you up will be low.”

“That was  _ one time.  _ And it wasn't their fault.  ” 

Scott and Melissa come in at about the same minute that Chris has to leave, and Isaac realizes he still hasn’t taken a shower. Melissa brought clothes that Stiles pulled from his bag, and she directs him upstairs. 

While he dries his hair, he looks through his notifications from Boyd and Erica. It’s two hours later in Chicago, and the Reyes party has passed the tipping point into drunken chaos. He’s never there for that, he’s always been reading about it at home, in more video and photo detail as apps and smartphones progressed. 

He can’t resist poking around. There’s a guest room, that is presumably nicer than the office with a pull out couch that Chris is sleeping in. Melissa’s room is completely messy, with a pile of clothes on one side of the bed and the comforter thrown back on the side she sleeps on. 

Unlike Stiles’ room, Scott’s isn’t frozen in time. The bookshelves are cleared out, and he notices a guitar holder without a guitar. This is the room of someone who is done being in this house. He thinks of his room in Dad's apartment, neither untouched nor packed up, because he still sleeps there at least a few times a month. 

He’s not sure which is the best way to be now.

Downstairs they’re talking and he’s been upstairs being creepy long enough. He goes down into the kitchen. Melissa has an actual phone book open and her eyes closed, finger poised to point at something at random. She opens one eye and smiles at him. 

“Christmas tradition,” is all she says before she violently jabs at a page. She slowly opens her eyes and smiles. “Tacky’s!”

Scott hops twice then yells, “Yesssssss.” 

“What’s Tacky’s?” Isaac asks. 

“It’s the worst, best food place ever. They have all of the bad novelty foods from across the country. Garbage plates, scrapple, cheese curds, bla bla bla. It’s food that if anyone from out of the country saw they would think we’re  _ disgusting.  _ It’s awesome.” 

“And it’s open?”

Scott shrugs and grins. “Beacon Hills is like another planet, man.”

All the foods are revolting, dripping with grease and gross gross gross. There’s not a speck of white anywhere because it’s all oil-drenched meat and cheese. He chooses Cincinnati Chili for both Allison and Chris, because he knows they both like it. It’s the first time all week it’s easy to make a choice. He adds fried okra and adds another when Melissa says, “Is that your dinner? Order two.” 

Melissa and Scott alone don’t have the same frenetic energy they do in a group. Melissa comes downstairs in pajama pants and an Easton University hoodie with a fully popped bag of popcorn and Scott fondly says, “Mom, you have a microwave in your room?” and Melissa says, “Of course I do.” 

Scott brought the Veggie Straws into the living room so Isaac doesn’t even have to decline the popcorn, he just holds the bag in his hands so he can’t be passed the popcorn bowl. 

It comes through his mind that he spends an enormous amount of time and thought trying to avoid things that might be upsetting. But he remembers Chris’ agreement that this was not the time to address big problems, so he pivots to keeping track of which channel Melissa and Scott spend the longest on before changing the channel. 

SyFy, eleven minutes. 

He understands why Stiles would want to spend time here. Not with the same clinging desperation Isaac had to be in their apartment before he lived with Allison and Chris, but as a place to come for quiet comfort and routine. Stiles and his father don’t seem to know how to talk to one another without arguing, even in an affectionate way. Melisssa and Scott just sit on the same couch and occasionally throw popcorn at one another. 

“Was Stiles the same when he was a kid?” he asks. Nothing is playing, Scott is clicking through a menu and generic music plays in the background. 

Melissa turns to him without lifting her head off the back of the couch. “Yes. So much. That kid used to run and run and run. He would run through his house in the same pattern over and over, running up to the kitchen wall and smacking his hand against it. I’m surprised he sleeps at all, it’s like he’s trying to set loose entire worlds.” 

“Are there worlds inside me, Mom?” Scott teases. 

Melissa reaches back and tousles his hair without taking her eyes off Isac. “Entire galaxies, kid. Do you want to hear stories?” 

“Yes,” Isaac says, “please.”

Melissa reaches somewhere behind her and pulls out her phone. “Allison says they’re on their way. It will be so much fun to tell these when he’s here to object.” 

The food comes a few minutes before everyone else, and Allison walks in the front door and immediately screws her face up, probably at the heavy grease and cheese smell. Stiles is two steps behind her and lights up when he walks in. “You got Tacky’s! Fuck yeah!” 

Melissa makes conspiratorial eye contact and waits until everyone has loaded plates before she starts in. “When Stiles was eleven he gave himself four haircuts in four days.” 

Stiles groans and Mr. Stilinski cups his hands like a megaphone and cheers. Melissa spears a cheese curd and talks as she chews. “Stiles had the longest hair. What was it called--emo?” Scott confirms over Stiles’ low continued groaning, and Melissa continues. “All dramatic and swoopy. But then he became obsessed with some Jim Carrey movie, and in it he had a jarhead haircut, and Stiles  _ had to have that look.  _ Now, Noah would have been happy to take him to a barber.  _ I  _ would have taken him to a barber. But he decided to take matters into his own hands.” 

While Melissa talks, Scott vaults off the couch and comes back with photo albums. Melissa continues, this time with visual aids because there are four photos for four haircuts. Isaac waits to laugh until Stiles starts, which does take long. By the time they’re on the third photo--a reverse mohawk with poorly shaved sides, they’re all losing it. Allison is covering her eyes saying “Oh my god, oh my god,” and Chris is smiling. 

“Can I please have that,” Isaac asks when Melissa gets to the last photo, Stiles snarling with a buzzcut. Not even a good buzzcut, completely the same length all the way around. 

He laughs and holds it up to Stiles’ face. “You looked like this! You looked like this until it grew out!”

Stiles takes it out of his hands and holds it out of reach. “Yes. I only looked like that until it grew out. Which took until my junior year.”

“Oh my  _ god.  _ Please give that to me. I need to see so many pictures.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes and hands it over. “I deleted my Facebook for a reason. We’re not all so lucky to have no evidence we were alive for most of our lives.” 

“You’re damn right I’m lucky,” Isaac says. He looks over at Mr. Stilinski. “Please tell me you have more of these.” 

Mr. Stilinski smiles wide. “I’ve got a whole box, kid.” 


	15. Chapter 15

Their CD player at home is in the kitchen, which is where they usually are. Isaac is pretty sure it came with the apartment, it’s a tiny under cabinet stereo that was probably state of the art at the time. It is loud enough when they want it, which isn’t often. But they always played one of Chris' CDs on Christmas Eve. 

Chris made mix CDs on his own--which was only marginally less bizarre back then--that they played, and the Christmas one had “Christmas Eve” written on it in tiny black sharpie. Last time they were in the apartment together, he and Allison made a Spotify playlist. 

“Can I have your WiFi password?” he asks Mr. Stilinski. They’re all in Mr. Stilinski’s small kitchen, and red Jell-O is setting in the fridge. Scott and Stiles are making faces through their phones at each other at the table, Allison is creaming the sugar and butter, and Melissa showing Chris how to make hot chocolate on Mr. Stilinski’s horrible electric stove. 

Mr. Stilinski nods and takes out his phone. “My  _ son  _ gave me the world’s most elaborate password, lest the neighbors learn what I watch on Netflix.” He finds it and shows Isaac his screen. It’s between thirty and thirty-five characters long, which was way longer than their password. 

“You’re a  _ county sheriff who works from home,  _ Dad. People without psychotic disorders have strong passwords.” 

He gives up quickly on typing the whole thing in. “Can you just text it to me?” he asks. Mr. Stilinski sends it. It really isn’t worth it just to go off data to stream a few songs, but at this point, it would be rude to say nevermind. 

“Should I do the music now?” he asks Allison when she turns the hand mixer off. She doesn't like having her focus broken when she’s doing wet ingredients, but there are already in a kitchen half the size with four more people. 

But it’s part of their after church routine now, so. 

Allison squints at the butter and says, “I’ll tell you yes when this is done.” 

Chris takes a break from looking disappointed in the stove and says, “Oh, we don’t have to do the music, kids.” 

Allison loudly says, “We do too have to do the music. It’s not just  _ yours,  _ you shared it with us and we outnumber you.”

“I’m being polite to our guests, they may have other music to play.”

Stiles looks around and raises his hand. “I vote for nothing but a Chris Argent playlist.” Scott quickly raises his hand, and Melissa follows. 

Mr. Stilinski looks a little confused, and he’s going to look more confused when the music starts, but he says, “Do you want a speaker? I have one in my shower.” 

“Dad, if you slip in the shower and scream for help, the home health aid won’t hear you over the Bon Jovi,” Stiles says while twisting his face into some filter on his phone. 

“Don’t worry son, I’ve left you the speaker in the will.”

Mr. Stilinski brings down a blue pod thing that is easy enough to connect to his phone, and within the bass starts up on the first song. He watches the adults especially, and almost immediately Mr. Stilinski quietly smiles. 

“I know this song,” Scott says, “this was in the Lizzie McGuire movie!” 

“Oh my god Scott,” Allison groans, “This is Earth Wind and Fire. Scott! I can’t marry you if you think this is from Lizzie McGuire!” 

Isaac is positive that he is the only one who heard that, between Melissa singing along and the tea kettle going off but  _ what.  _

After  _ Shining Star  _ is  _ Changes  _ then  _ Little Red Corvette.  _ At home, they listen but keep it quiet while they talk or work. Melissa keeps taking the little blue speaker and turning it up until they can’t possibly talk over it, which suits the McCalls and Stilinski’s fine because they’re singing. 

When  _ Happy Phantom  _ winds down, he knows what’s going to happen before it does, but the intensity with which they scream when  _ Don’t Stop Believin  _ starts is straight out of one of Boyd’s college parties. But instead of white girls, it’s adults and Stiles and  _ Allison.  _

Isaac doesn’t sing but his face does warm while he leans against the doorway and watches. Stiles is throwing his fists around while he sings, and would have knocked into Scott if he didn’t block it, which quickly turns into a singing/fighting game. Even Melissa and Mr. Stliniski are going along with it, but the strangest development is Allison.

Until now she’d smiles along at this drastically new way to respond with Dad’s music but now she’s part of the insane energy, singing and waving the spatula she’d been  using in the air. She could marry into this family, she can be part of it in a way he can’t. 

Like he read Isaac’s mind, Stiles dances over and grabs his left arm. Isaac allows his arm to relax while Stiles presses his hand to a fist then finishes out the song using his arm as a microphone. 

When the song ends he whispers, “Next year you’re going to be singing your head off, I bet you anything.” 

The playlist runs out and Spotify goes to what Stiles calls “Industrial Enya” so Scott picks up his phone. “Is everyone okay with the Elf soundtrack? I’ll skip ‘Baby It's Cold Outside.’” 

All the cookies are done by ten. They're a complicated recipe that was simple for Allison, chocolate chip with caramel drops and they're almost gone already. Melissa announces, “I have no intention of sleeping on a floor, but you kids have at it. I’m stealing the boy’s bed.” 

He didn’t realize Melissa was staying over too, but it makes sense. Once she goes upstairs, Mr. Stilinski retrieves new air mattresses and there’s activity around trying to find a compatible pump before Scott figures out that they don’t need one. 

Allison assesses the couch, the single air mattress and double and says, “I get the couch.”

Stiles laughs loudly. “How do you figure that?” 

“I sleep the most deeply. Therefore, I have a bigger possible difference in sleep quality if I sleep on an unstable air mattress.” 

“You have no idea how I sleep!”

“You sleep with Isaac, so I assume you’re used to some getting up and walking around and staring at a glowing phone. There’s no way you sleep well. And consider it a Christmas gift to me.” 

“No can do,” Stiles says, “we agreed to no gifts. And I sleep like a fucking rock, I’m on antipsychotics, lady! Therefore,  _ I  _ am the one--”

“I get the couch,” Scott says, “I was shot.” 

“ _ Ten years ago. _ ” 

“I still win,” Scott says happily. 

The air mattress he shares with Stiles is fine though, especially when they turn out the lights and the only light is the half burned-out Christmas lights on Mr. Stilinski’s three-foot tree. 

Isaac periodically gets a little existential about how unlikely his life is. He met Allison in an antique mall when he was 16. He met Stiles because they sat next to each other on a train. No, because Stiles overrode the five nonverbal cues Isaac was putting out that no one could sit by him, and thank god he did. 

“Hey, I’m glad we’re all here,” he whispers. “It’s better than, like, dying or something.” 

“My god, Isaac,” Allison says, “be a little less sentimental.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No more than two more chapters I'd say, but possibly just one. <3 Thank you for reading


	16. Chapter 16

Isaac always wakes up early on Christmas, and it turns out Stiles does too. 

They sit on the steps in front of Stiles’ house and look out on the street. It occurs to Isaac that if it was snowing, or they had tea or one of them was smoking it would be very picturesque, but he looks over at Stiles, with his hair sticking up and decides it’s plenty picturesque.

“Do you want to go on a walk?” Stile suggests. 

The neighborhood is so well lit, it practically looks like daytime. He hasn’t seen one of those scary-looking neighborhood watch signs but there definitely is one. The sky almost looks like home, far clearer than Chicago and if he didn’t want to actually sleep sometime soon, he’d want to explore. But they’ll be there for a few more nights. 

“We’re not wearing shoes.” 

“Um, they exist and can be retrieved.”

“We shouldn’t leave, everyone might wake up soon.” 

“That’s true, can’t miss the Christmas magic.” 

“It’s rude.” 

Stiles beckons Isaac to scoot closer and puts his arm around his shoulders. “I love how hard you are trying to hide that you love Christmas. Isaac! It is so exhausting to be you! You get to like things without flour and THC!” 

Isaac grabs Stiles’ watch hand and hits the button to make the numbers light up. “My dad is already awake.” 

“Yeah, but dude, let’s have a little dad break. But don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re voluntarily speaking to mine. We’re staying until you call him Dad too.” 

“I think Chris would kill him out of jealousy. And he can’t afford to do that, they’re totally friends now.”

“Oh my god I know, this has been the most productive trip home of my life. Usually, I just watch TV with Scott.”

Across the street a light turns on in an upstairs bedroom, quickly followed by a light in the next window. Some kid woke up their parents at five AM, and he and Stiles watch as lights turn on in the house as probably half a dozen kids start screaming for presents. 

If he and Stiles had a kid, they’d probably still be awake first. They might not even sleep, Isaac would want to make sure there were fresh cinnamon rolls and he’d never been able to do that in less than three hours. 

“Oh man,” Stiles says, “do you think if we made a kid, we would totally be the ones waking them up.” 

Isaac bumps into Stiles’ shoulder. “How would we get a kid?” 

“I don’t know, we’d acquire one in some weird way, like we do. You’d teach it how to make bread by the time they’re three. I’d teach them about the Star Wars extended universe. Our two true passions.” 

Another house lights up, just as quickly as the other. Isaac knows that soon Allison will wake up, and she’ll probably wake up Scott, but with Allison up they can start making popovers. Scott mentioned watching Elf, but other than that nothing is planned, so probably no one will mind if he makes chocolate chip muffins. He probably could eat something white today. 

He nudges Stiles to get him to look Isaac in the face. “Don’t tell anyone yet, okay?” 

Stiles grins. “Um, is this our first family secret? Yes, totally.” 

“I don’t want to go back to nursing school. I have no idea why I even signed up.”

Surprise is clear on Stiles’ face, but not disgust. “Wasn’t it because...wait why did you go?” 

Isaac yawns and shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m full of mystery, maybe I’ll pay someone to tell me why when we get home.” 

“Jesus Christ, look at all this Christmas shit. Hey, wanna hear my family secret?”

He reaches up and tries to fix Stiles’ insane bedhead. “Hold on, let’s make sure you look great for your big reveal.”

Stiles takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to just do this gig work. I’m doing fuck all. I used to want to be in the FBI, then when that ended I just kind of gave up on wanting. But I’ve gotta figure out a career, especially if we end up stealing a child.” 

He bursts out laughing, their repeated references to a theoretical child doesn’t even throw him. “I mean, yeah. You can’t work at the ice rink but the world is yours beyond that. But is that really a secret? Everyone would be excited.” 

Stiles kisses him. “Yeah, but I just need your excited right now.” 

The front door opens and they turn around to see Allison, squinting against the streetlights. “You assholes are so loud.” 

“You love us,” Stiles sings. 

“Yu-huh,” Allison says, “will you please come inside while we wait for the parents to wake up? We need to do this Christmas thing that we came out here for.” 

Isaac stands up and pulls Stiles up with him. It feels insane that Christmas has barely started, he feels like all the hard stuff is over. 

“Which of our parents do you think violated the no present rule the worst?” he asks, sitting on the couch next to Allison. 

Scott looks at Allison. “Uuuum, your dad. Obviously.” 

Upstairs he hears people walking who are way louder than Chris, which means Christmas is happening soon. Maybe he’s tired, or his brain really burned out on crazy yesterday. Or maybe he’s just okay and can’t think of anything that will go terribly wrong today. 

They have a few more days here, and the only thing he feels any pressure to do is bother Stiles into telling him which states they’re passing through on the way home. 

“Hey,” Isaac says, catching Stiles’ attention, “fucking love you, you stupid idiot.” 

“Fucking love you too you complete freak. Merry Christmas.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this story and being part of my holiday season!!


End file.
